Time to Demand Proper EIR for Van de Kamps

How You Can Get On The Official Notice List

By Miki Jackson and Laura Gutierrez

For the last three years, the LACCD has used threadbare excuses to avoid opening the Van de Kamps Satellite Campus to offer a meaningful and coherent slate of community service and academic classes to serve the communities of Silverlake, Echo Park, Atwater Village, Glassell Park, Cypress Park, Highland Park, Mount Washington and Eagle Rock.  Without environmental review in 2009, LACCD started leasing the campus to political cronies of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.  Audits by the State Controller’s Office and review by the LA Superior Court found misconduct by LACCD officials at Van de Kamps.

The environmental lawsuit won by the Van de Kamps Coalition requires the District to prepare a Subsequent Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to examine future use of the $91 million Van de Kamps campus. NOW is the time for residents in these affected communities to use the public input process to participate in the LACCD’s court-ordered reconsideration of its rash and illogical decision to try to abandon the community college mission of this campus.

This coming Friday, October 12, 2012, is the deadline for YOU to ask to be put on LACCD’s official list for all notices related to the Van de Kamps environmental review process.  The Van de Kamps Coalition is asking residents of the City to demand that the EIR include analysis of the original programming plans developed with extensive community input – something LACCD is currently not proposing to do.

NOW is the time for persons who have been reading about the appalling misdirection of taxpayer monies at Van de Kamps to DO SOMETHING TO DEMAND LACCD conform its behavior with community demands and the law.  Silence is your permission to continue to take your tax monies (about $120 per year on the average tax bill) and offer no ladder of opportunity to our young adults who desperately need these services and no meaningful services to our community.

LACCD has made no effort to outreach to you and our communities to let you know it is preparing a new environmental document in which you have a legal right to participate.  The Van de Kamps Coalition is distributing this information to you because the LACCD staff has continued its effort to only notify the existing tenants of the Van de Kamps campus.

Are you going to sit by idly and let LACCD do this or will you speak out to demand the satellite campus LACCD promised our communities for more than a decade before it was snatched away by the Mayor?  PLEASE forward this ACTION ALERT to your e-mail address book or post to your Facebook page in order to help the Van de Kamps Coalition get out the word of how people have an opportunity to change LACCD’s course through our collective voices!

Here are the instructions for how to send an email to LACCD:

Please take a moment to send an email to Vice Chancellor Adriana Berrera and the Trustees to make sure LACCD does not exclude you further from the environmental process.  Of course, this email is a template.  Feel free to add to it to express your feelings about the loss of the Van de Kamps campus.

[send to these addresses: BarreraD@email.laccd.edu, JustinCL@email.laccd.edu, thayes@webtaha.com, vdkcoalition@gmail.com]:

Dr. Adriana Berrera and Trustees

Los Angeles Community College District

770 Wilshire Blvd.

Los Angeles, California 90017

 October __, 2012

RE: Van de Kamps Campus Subsequent EIR – Interested Person List and Scoping

Dear Dr. Berrera and LACCD Trustees:  

Pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act, I request that my name, address and email be added to the list of interested persons to receive all notices, a copy or notice of online access to the Draft and Final Subsequent EIR for the Van de Kamps campus project, and fair notice to myself and all community organizations of any public meeting to consider future changes to the use of the Community College Campus you built at Van de Kamps with my taxpayer monies.  

In fact, I demand that the Board of LACCD schedule a meeting at a public location in Northeast Los Angeles adequate to hold persons interested in this matter to consider any further leasing or other changes in use to our community college campus and that neighborhood councils, homeowner groups, and other community electronic bulletin boards be given at least 10 days advance notice of any meeting where you will consider changes to the Van de Kamps campus.

The EIR must analyze the original plan to open the Van de Kamps Satellite Campus (validated by the Kosmont Associates Report), including the District’s plan for development of the adjoining land where Denny’s Restaurant is located.

Most sincerely,

[Provide Your Name 

Your Mailing Address

Your E-Mail Address] 

The Van de Kamps Coalition is an all-volunteer coalition that advocates for a return of the Van de Kamps campus to the adult community college programming promised to voters and taxpayers. Please go to our website to see final judgment of the lawsuit and look for future postings and web updates.   www.vandekamps.org email: vdkcoalition@gmail.com

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Community College Board - Candidate Forum - Thursday March 3 at 7pm

The Education Committee Chair (interim) of the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council invites you to attend "Greet and Meet" candidates running for the Los Angeles Community College District this coming Thursday, March 3rd from 7 to 9 PM at the 3750 N. Verdugo Road Community Center.

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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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SAVE THE LA CITY COLLEGE SATELLITE CAMPUS AT VAN DE KAMPS

Stop the Bond Abuse and Conversion of Our Promised Community College Campus to What the Community College District itself Describes as a "tenant based commercial shell and core" project.

Protest this at the "Grand Opening” of this stolen campus on October 13th at the Historic Van de Kamp’s Bakery –

2930 Fletcher Drive -South East corner of Fletcher and San Fernando Road

Date: October 13, 2010 • Time: • Meet and Greet Breakfast at 9:30am*

Program and Tour at 10:15am

*for free breakfast, RSVP at 213-486-6560 ext. 308

Go to Van de Kamps Coalition web site for more information on how LA Community College District abused taxpayer bonds, misled the community and hijacked a College from our Northeast Community and Taxpayers

website: http://www.vandekamps.org/ • email: vdkcoalition@gmail.com

Tell the Mayor how you feel about this - he will be there - his pet projects have taken a College Campus away from Northeast college aged students. There will barely be one for-credit college course offered each night at a campus built to have up to 100 college classes.

At the urging of the Mayor’s office, LACCD bureaucrats destroyed 8 planned classrooms and replaced them with executive office suites for the Mayor’s favored union-sponsored unemployment programs. This is not what voters approved Mr. Mayor!

Meet Chancellor Daniel La Vista. Ask him if he has read the plan and studies that show LA City College could have opened Van de Kamps with 80% profit oriented classes and 20% community college academic classes – all despite the financial problems at City College main campus? Why is Vice Chancellor Adriana Berrera telling the LA Times that the state budget problem prevented LA City College from opening Van de Kamps as planned when studies established overwhelming demand for classes in the underserved Northeast?

You can ask the questions. We’ve been asking these same questions and still have not gotten a straight answer. The Van de Kamps Coalition and taxpayers have filed two lawsuits to foreclose the illegal direction of the Board led by Trustees Mona Field and Sylvia Scott-Hayes. Now is the time for action to make them accountable.

When you get home, if you are as alarmed as we are, call:

State Controller John Chiang (213) 833-6010 to demand an audit of the Bond Program.

State Attorney General Jerry Brown (800) 952-5225 to demand an investigation and prosecution.

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LACCD Van de Kamp Innovation Center Grand Opening - October 13, 2010 | 9:30 a.m.

 For more information contact Miya Walker at MWalker@mww.com

Other news about the LACCD Van de Kamps Innovation Center

VAN DE KAMP'S COALITION TO COMMUNITY COLLEGES: SEE YOU IN COURT

TAXPAYER LAWSUIT TARGETS CITY OF LOS ANGELES TAKEOVER OF HISTORIC VAN DE KAMPS BAKERY COMMUNITY COLLEGE SITE

LACCD’S ACADEMIC SENATE PRESIDENT WANTS TO TELL NORTHEAST COMMUNITY TO “FUCK OFF” OVER LOSS OF NORTHEAST SATELLITE CAMPUS

OFFICIAL EMAILS SHOW LACCD LIED TO ELECTED OFFICIALS ABOUT ITS ABILITY TO OPERATE VAN DE KAMPS COLLEGE CAMPUS
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SAVE THE DATE: LACCD VAN DE KAMP INNOVATION CENTER GRAND OPENING, OCTOBER 13TH

For more information contact:

Veronica Garcia
Communications/BuildLACCD
770 Wilshire Blvd. 6th floor
Los Angeles, CA 90017
213.891.2493 office
714.380.7731 mobile
veronica.garcia@build-laccd.org

---

Other news about the LACCD Van de Kamps Innovation Center

VAN DE KAMP'S COALITION TO COMMUNITY COLLEGES: SEE YOU IN COURT

TAXPAYER LAWSUIT TARGETS CITY OF LOS ANGELES TAKEOVER OF HISTORIC VAN DE KAMPS BAKERY COMMUNITY COLLEGE SITE

LACCD’S ACADEMIC SENATE PRESIDENT WANTS TO TELL NORTHEAST COMMUNITY TO “FUCK OFF” OVER LOSS OF NORTHEAST SATELLITE CAMPUS

OFFICIAL EMAILS SHOW LACCD LIED TO ELECTED OFFICIALS ABOUT ITS ABILITY TO OPERATE VAN DE KAMPS COLLEGE CAMPUS
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TAXPAYER LAWSUIT TARGETS CITY OF LOS ANGELES TAKEOVER OF HISTORIC VAN DE KAMPS BAKERY COMMUNITY COLLEGE SITE

Multiple violations of state law and false claims about operating funds by LA Community College District Board draws lawsuit by Northeast taxpayers.

(Los Angeles, CA) A group of taxpayers of the Los Angeles Community College District (“LACCD”) announced they have filed suit seeking to invalidate a May 26, 2010 proposed lease of nearly half of the Northeast Satellite Campus of Los Angeles City College at the historic Van de Kamps Bakery to the City of Los Angeles. The lawsuit seeks to halt a deceptive effort of certain LACCD Board members and administrators to use the state budget crisis as a pretense to avoid finishing the decade-long plan to build and open a Satellite Campus to Los Angeles City College. Instead, LACCD officials have tried to hand off the $72 million taxpayer-financed campus to private corporations eager to rent the brand new buildings. The scheme would deny educational opportunity to young adults living in Northeast Los Angeles and substitute programs for the unemployed person from all over the City.

“Trustees Silvia Scott-Hayes, Mona Field, and Georgia Mercer have made false representations to the community that the state budget crisis prevents the District from opening the Northeast Campus as a community college satellite,” said Miki Jackson. “But the District’s own economic feasibility studies establish the fact that the Satellite campus could be opened with profitable non-credit courses in high demand and without the need of state budget funding, yet District officials continue to falsely claim the state budget would affect their ability to open the Van de Kamps site.”

Filed three weeks ago, attorneys for the taxpayers are in the process of serving the lawsuit on defendants LACCD, the City of Los Angeles and the intended lease beneficiaries: a group of privately-run workforce unemployment programs funded by federal economic stimulus funds and the Workforce Investment Act. “LACCD placed the Northeast Satellite Campus on its Proposition 39 project list as a promise to voters to build and open it using taxpayer-approved funds, but some kind of politically wired bait-and-switch is now underway to divert millions of dollars of new taxpayer-paid facilities to private corporate interests that appear to be linked to Mayor Villaraigosa,” observed Paul Heidenreich, an attorney who filed the taxpayer lawsuit on behalf of the taxpayer plaintiffs.

“Our taxpayer lawsuit focuses on how LACCD Facilities Director Larry Eisenberg allegedly oversaw the expenditure of at least $6.2 million of voter-approved Proposition 39 bond funds to convert a planned classroom building into administrative offices for the unemployment programs funded by the City of Los Angeles Workforce Investment Board,” said another plaintiff, Andrew Garsten. Records of the LACCD show that in the midst of building the new $72 million Northeast Satellite campus, subordinates reporting to Eisenberg, in violation of the state Contract Code, converted the value of the historic Van de Kamps Bakery Building construction contract to the benefit of the proposed unemployment program tenants championed by the City.

Under the California Constitution, community colleges that pass bond issues with only 55% of the vote are limited to using the bond monies for capital expenditures for construction of community college “school facilities.” The lawsuit challenges the LACCD’s use of Proposition 39 funds for changing the historic Van de Kamps Bakery Building into a huge unemployment office operated by outside private non-profits.

“Under Proposition 39 and Proposition 13, LACCD has no authority to use precious school bond funds to re-design and re-construct a school building into an office space for workforce bureaucrats – and yet, that is what LACCD did,” said Mr. Heidenreich. The Board could have decided on May 26, 2010 to return to a lawful course to use the building for community college classes, but instead it conferred millions of dollars of illegal taxpayer monies on private corporations by handing the historic bakery building over to the City of Los Angeles. The City plans to sublease 100 percent of the leased area to four private entities: Community Career Development, Inc., Worker Education and Resource Center, Inc., Archdiocesan Youth Employment (a program of Catholic Charities), and the Atwater Park Center, Inc.

In addition to the taxpayer claims, the lawsuit also seeks to invalidate the lease to the City of Los Angeles because Education Code rules on no-bid leasing were also violated. On April 14, 2010, the Board tried to lease this same space to Community Career Development using an Education Code provision that allows no-bid leases to ‘private educational institutions’, but when the community established that the proposed lessee did not qualify, the Board hastily canceled the proposal.

“Six weeks later, the Board returned with a new proposal to lease the same space to the City of Los Angeles but allow the City to sublease 100% of the space to anyone. LACCD is using the City as a ‘municipal entity front’ to hand a no-bid lease to a bunch of private corporations,” said Daniel Wright, another attorney representing the taxpayers. “The lease arrangement is a sham to circumvent the requirement for competitive bidding in the Education Code.”

The campus, located in the Northeast Los Angeles at the intersection of San Fernando Road and Fletcher Drive, is already the subject of a lawsuit for the LACCD's failure to do any environmental review required by the California Environmental Quality Act when District officials decided they wanted to change the use of the site from a Satellite Community College campus to a profit-making tenant-based facility. E-mails show LACCD’s own environmental consultant told District officials that a Supplemental Environmental Impact Report was required before implementing the changes. This advice was ignored as Trustees Scott-Hayes, Field, and Mercer led the rest of the Board down a path of illegal actions including the mis-expenditure of millions and millions of taxpayer bond funds. The Los Angeles County Superior Court has set a hearing to promptly move the case to trial on the merits.

---

For more information:

Paul Heidenreich (310) 545-5459

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LACCD’S ACADEMIC SENATE PRESIDENT WANTS TO TELL NORTHEAST COMMUNITY TO “FUCK OFF” OVER LOSS OF NORTHEAST SATELLITE CAMPUS

E-mails Show Los Angeles City College President Jamillah Moore Agreed With Academic Senate President Ken Sherwood That the Community Ought To Be Told To “Fuck Off”

The ongoing investigation of the circumstances surrounding the transfer of the Northeast Satellite Campus of Los Angeles City College into the hands of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has turned up another example of the arrogance of the current administration of the District and Los Angeles City College.

What brought on this barrage of profanity and disrespect? Netty Carr, a founder of the Van de Kamps Coalition had the nerve to very politely ask Los Angeles Community College President Dr. Jamillah Moore a few questions about what was happening with the change of the Van de Kamps Campus from the promised Community College Satellite to a "commercial tenant based" property.

Below is the email exchange where Carr (and the rest of the community, by extension) is crudely insulted by the "leadership" of the College. Ken Sherwood is the Academic Senate President, he is a "Ralph Bunche Distinguished Professor of Speech". I wonder what Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche, would have had to say about how this professor "communicates".

This is a disgusting example of the way these arrogant "educators" and "leaders" regard the community that pays the taxes that support them. It is particularly pointed in light of the tag line Sherwood puts on his emails: "Educating minds, opening hearts, celebrating community". This is a terrible example for the young people he is supposed to be "educating". Sherwood and Moore are not demonstrating the kind of character or judgement we would hope a people we trust with our youth would have.

We think Carr, who was honored for her community activism by Senator Carol Liu as a "Woman of the Year" for the 21st Senatorial District in 2009, would not have chosen to have her community efforts "celebrated" quite this way.

Most government bodies, educational institutions and many companies have standards for language and subject matter used on their official emails - profanity, particularly the "F" word and other especially crude, graphic and sexual profanity is verboten…maybe Los Angeles Community College District just has no standards…it would explain a lot.

Both Moore and Sherwood's email addresses are listed below, in case you would like to let them know what you think of their highly educated communication. It would not be a bad idea to copy their boss, Interim Chancellor Wieder

Chancellor Weider, care of : justincl@laccd.edu

email for Dr. Moore: moorejk@lacitycollege.edu

----- Original Message -----

From: Sherwood, Kenneth G

To: Moore, Jamillah K,

Sent: Wed May 06 17:26:29 2009

Subject: RE: VDK / NE Campus questions

OMG. Tell her to fuck off!

KEN SHERWOOD PRESIDENT, ACADEMIC SENATE RALPH BUNCHE DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF SPEECH COMMUNICATION LOS ANGELES CITY COLLEGE AD 223

323-953-4000 xt 2469 (o)

323-953-4013 (f)

sherwokg@lacitycollege.edu

Educating minds, opening hearts, celebrating community

Below- Moore's reply of agreement with Sherwoods' "f her" email

-----Original Message-----

From: Moore, Jamillah K

Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 6:46 PM

To: Sherwood, Kenneth G

Subject: Re: VDK / NE Campus questions

Sure

--------------------------

Sent using BlackBerry

Below-Moore's comment about Netty that started Sherwood's "f her" email.

-----Original Message-----

From: Moore, Jamillah K

Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 5:25 PM

To: Sherwood, Kenneth G

Subject: Fw: VDK / NE Campus questions

She is in a different world.

--------------------------

Sent using BlackBerry

Sherwood further expresses what we can only take to be his pleasure at their poetic exchange:

From: Sherwood, Kenneth G [Sherwood, Kenneth G]

To: Moore, Jamillah K

CC:

BCC:

Sent: 5/6/2009 6:47:15 PM

Subject: RE: VDK / NE Campus questions

Attachments:

Wow. Why was that so easy? LOL

KEN SHERWOOD PRESIDENT, ACADEMIC SENATE RALPH BUNCHE DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF SPEECH COMMUNICATION LOS ANGELES CITY COLLEGE AD 223

323-953-4000 xt 2469 (o)

323-953-4013 (f)

sherwokg@lacitycollege.edu

Educating minds, opening hearts, celebrating community

Netty's original message which sparked such outrage and potty talk among our distinguished Community College leaders. Moore got one thing right, Netty is in a different world, one where she extends courtesy and we all try to avoid being so rude and crude.

----- Original Message -----

From: Netty Carr

To: Moore, Jamillah K

Sent: Wed May 06 13:47:10 2009

Subject: VDK / NE Campus questions

Hello Dr. Moore,

I'm following up on the Atwater Village / Glassell Park Town Hall meeting. Is there a date set yet and will you be the one giving the presentation to the community? Since there were only 7 community members who attended the April 27th meeting, I'd like to request a full presentation like you had at the MLK Library District meeting. The North East communities have been waiting a long time and deserve the full presentation.

Since you have handed off this project to the District and they are now in charge the NE Campus who do we direct our questions / concerns to? Can you give us contact list of all the decision makers for the NE campus. Many people have moved on from the project over the 8 year span and we need to have a updated contact list.

I'm hoping you can answer this question if not, please refer me to someone who can. Since the Campus was built with bond money funded by the taxpayers and now the District will be leasing the buildings out and collecting the lease money where will the proceeds from the leases go and how will North East Los Angeles stake holders benefit from this arrangement

Thanks........................Ciao, Netty

ÿflMessage File name: RE VDK NE Campus questions (14).msg

* emails above are as we received them from Los Angeles Community College District, as a result of a California Public Records Act request, with the exception that we added emphasis with some bolding and character size increase, tried to put them in order and removed private people's emails to protect their privacy.

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LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT’S CITIZENS BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE MEETING SCHEDULED THURSDAY JULY 8TH NOON AT VAN DE KAMPS!

Northeast Community Urged To Attend And Demand That the Bond Oversight Committee Ask For Intervention By California Attorney General Jerry Brown, State Controller John Chiang, and Economic Stimulus Inspector General Laura Chick

Citizen’s Bond Oversight Committee of LACCD has called a Special Meeting at the Van de Kamps Campus to continue its investigation of potential wrongdoing by LACCD officials in the alleged misuse of taxpayer bond funds to convert the Northeast Satellite Campus of LA City College into a leased tenant facility. A Satellite Community College Campus for Northeast’s students, promised to taxpayers of the Northeast for a decade, will be taken over by the Mayor’s unemployment programs, unless YOUR VOICE is lifted to demand a return of the campus.

Since April 2009, LACCD has falsely claimed that it cannot open and run the Northeast Satellite Campus because of the State budget crisis. This claim directly contradicts two LACCD market demand studies of the Northeast Campus establishing the fact that the demand for profit-making, fee-based courses would fully cover operational costs and subsidize a modest number of traditional community college classes. This claim of the State Budget crisis affecting the opening of the Northeast Campus is a pretense or excuse to hand the buildings over to the Mayor’s unemployment programs and a favorite charter high school, the Alliance for College Ready Public Schools.

The LACCD has done no outreach and no public disclosure of this Public Meeting of the Citizen’s Bond Oversight Committee. The job of this Committee is to carefully alert the public if it detects improper misuse of bond funds. The LACCD’s bond counsel released a report in March 2010 pointing out that over the last nine years, the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee has NEVER issued the annual report to the public required by state law.

The Committee should be urged to take some meaningful action to demand that the LACCD provide the Committee with its own independent financial analyst and independent legal counsel. The Committee should also be asked to issue press releases and/or letters calling for outside investigations of the wrongdoing by the California Attorney General, the State Controller’s Audit Office, and the Inspector General for Economic Stimulus Funds.

WHAT: LACCD Citizen’s Bond Oversight Committee Meeting

DATE: Thursday, July 8, 2010

TIME: Noon

PLACE: Van de Kamps Building, Second Floor Conference Room

For more information, please go to http://www.vandekamps.org/ or call Miki Jackson at 323-855-0764.

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OFFICIAL EMAILS SHOW LACCD LIED TO ELECTED OFFICIALS ABOUT ITS ABILITY TO OPERATE VAN DE KAMPS COLLEGE CAMPUS

Fearing That Assemblymember Kevin DeLeon Could Learn Reasons Given By LA City College President For Closure Were False, LACCD Board Member E-mails Show Them Coaching Controversial President, Dr. Jamillah Moore, To Stop Making False Statements About Why Van de Kamps Is To Be Leased Out To Mayor’s Pet Workforce Union-Run Projects.

Councilmembers Ed Reyes, Eric Garcetti, Assemblymember Kevin DeLeon, State Senator Gil Cedillo, and Congressmember Xavier Becerra Happily Believed The Misinformation Provided By LACCD Officials Rather Than Follow Up On Allegations Of Misconduct By Community Representatives. Official Documents Show The Community Allegations Were Valid.

(Los Angeles, June 14, 2010) The ongoing investigation of misconduct by Trustees and Management of the Los Angeles Community College District (“LACCD”) by the Van de Kamps Coalition shows that community college officials plotted a strategy to mislead elected officials into believing that the State Budget crisis required them to lease out the Northeast Satellite Campus. In fact, college officials deliberately ignored an independently validated and faculty-approved business plan for the Northeast Campus at Van de Kamps. The business plan called for opening the campus by teaching 80% profit-oriented classes that were independent of the State’s Budget for funding. For this reason, the Northeast Campus was never dependent upon the State’s Budget to open, but LACCD officials lied to the public and elected officials by saying that it was.

Profit-oriented classes include classes like special employer contract training classes, community education classes (Yoga, foreign language, English as a Second Language), grant and foundation funded vocational certificate programs, short-term weekend continuing education, etc. Using the revenues from this high-percentage of profit-oriented classes to cover campus operational costs, LA City College faculty planned to also offer sorely needed community college transfer and other academic classes to Northeast students who needed to start off college at a location closer to home. According to the Northeast Campus business plan, the operational costs would quickly be covered and enable academic classes without any State Budget reimbursements. The study also showed that those for profit classes would not take away from the same sort of classes making money for LA City College and the other community colleges campuses right now.

“The whole reason we spent $72 million of taxpayer bonds and other funds to build the Northeast Campus was to open it up with 80% profit-oriented classes and 20% traditional community college classes,” said Miki Jackson of the Van de Kamps Coalition. “LACCD officials trying to blame their conscious refusal to open the Northeast Campus on the State Budget crisis is like Pat Robertson blaming the Katrina Hurricane on homosexuals – no sane person would connect the two.”

One e-mail showed the staff of Assemblymember DeLeon’s office asking LA City College President Dr. Jamillah Moore various questions about the District’s plans and concerns raised by the Van de Kamps Coalition. When Dr. Moore forwarded the e-mail questions to Chancellor Dr. Marshall Drummond, he reacted privately to Moore with two partial words: “Fuk em.” According to Laura Gutierrez, a Coalition member, “We shook our heads in disbelief that the Chancellor of the largest community college in nation would harbor such seething hostility to answering the questions of our elected officials. It was really shocking – and he didn’t even use a complete sentence!”

“When Assemblymember Kevin DeLeon started asking questions, Chancellor Marshall Drummond’s response was: ‘Fuk em’”

E-mails also show that the staff of Councilmember Eric Garcetti thought that the community was “resigned” to the loss of the Van de Kamps campus and Garcetti’s staff expected things to quiet down after the initial outcry. E-mails also show that Councilmember Ed Reyes’ staff met with LACCD officials prior to an early June 2009 meeting with Van de Kamps Coalition members. “In our meeting with Mr. Reyes, he never disclosed to us that he or his staff had already met with District officials,” observed Laura Gutierrez.

For months, Councilmember Reyes has told community leaders that LACCD’s leasing of the Northeast Campus buildings to a charter high school and workforce unemployment programs funded by the City’s Workforce Investment Board was “preferable to the buildings standing empty.” Coalition member Netty Carr disputed that claim: “I personally worked for a decade to bring this satellite campus to Atwater Village/Glassell Park and the Councilmember thinks we and LA City College had no plan on how to open it? There are hundreds of pages of plans and feasibility studies showing Van de Kamps has overwhelming demand for the planned classes. If LACCD officials had not grabbed the Northeast Campus away from LA City College, we would have been up and running by now.”

“We have the e-mails that show the central office administrators, led by Chancellor Drummond, strong-armed LA City College faculty to hand the Northeast Campus over to central office control instead of the City College,” said Gutierrez. “It’s all about the District administrators making money for their budget instead of benefiting the students at LA City College.”

In a striking irony, the very same type of profit-oriented classes that District administrators deny would be viable at Van de Kamps are the only type of classes that LA City College is offering this summer at its main campus. “If those classes are profitable over at LA City College main campus, why are they being rejected over here?” observed Jackson. “LACCD will use our campus to simply fatten their own administrative budget. I could use words similar to Chancellor Drummond, but then I would have to wash my mouth out with soap.”

Van de Kamps Coalition members vow that they will not quit until Van de Kamps is returned to LA City College as a proper satellite campus and other scandals they have found are fully revealed. “Our elected officials could have stopped this political Mayor centric driven disaster. Over $7.1 million of illegal bond expenditures were used by LACCD and the Mayor’s office to destroy classrooms at Van de Kamps. Passively watching those illegal expenditures unfold were Ed Reyes, Eric Garcetti, Kevin DeLeon, Gil Cedillo, and Xavier Becerra,” the Coalition members said. “This is what happens when elected officials ‘Politically go along, to get along’ instead showing real leadership.”

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Mayor and LACCD’s Improper Placement Of Gang/Union/Workforce Programs At Van de Kamps Site Endangers High School Students Attending The Same Site

Editorial by Miki Jackson and Laura Gutierrez of the Van de Kamps Coalition

More than a decade of work with Northeast Los Angeles communities to plan, fund, design, build, and open a Satellite Community College Campus of Los Angeles City College at the historic Van de Kamps Bakery has been trashed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District. A year ago, Trustee Sylvia Scott-Hayes privately rejoiced to LACCD staff that the Van de Kamps Community Steering Committee was shut down and she did NOT want any further engagement of the community – people from her own neighborhood. She and others at LACCD had another vision and it did not include the community Van de Kamps was intended to serve.

The Mayor and LACCD Board members like Sylvia Scott-Hayes say they know “better” than the community what we need. And what we apparently need is to take the brand new $72 million community college campus away from Northeast Los Angeles minority communities and instead offer short-term certificate training programs to ex-gang members, recently released criminal offenders, criminal record expungement classes, and similar unemployment office-type services to thousands of people from all over the City. The Van de Kamps campus is about to become a perverse type of “magnet school” for the most desperate of job seekers in Los Angeles – many with a criminal record.

At the May 26, 2010 Board meeting, just prior to approving this plan, Scott-Hayes gave the virtual “finger” to her own community by falsely claiming that the state budget crisis justifies LACCD grabbing the campus away from the competent LA City College faculty and handing the buildings to these very narrowly-focused workforce programs pushed by the Mayor. Scott-Hayes knows she is tossing in the trash can multiple economic feasibility plans for Van de Kamps that are not dependent upon state funding during the current crisis. There is a way to operate it without dependency on the state’s budget, but Scott-Hayes stubbornly refuses to acknowledge its existence. So instead false claims about the impact of the budget crisis flow from her lips.

The loss of the Northeast Satellite Community College Campus began on July 15, 2009, over strenuous objections from the representatives of Northeast Los Angeles organizations in the Van de Kamps Coalition. On that day, openly endorsed by Deputy Mayor Larry Frank, Scott-Hayes and fellow board members Mona Field and Georgia Mercer led the effort to hand off a brand new community college classroom building to the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools – a private non-profit entity on whose advisory board Richard Riordan sits.

The Alliance Charter School lease will pour cash into LACCD’s coffers to allow the District to offer community college classes at other locations across the county but not at Northeast Los Angeles. Although LACCD promised the voters, in return for approval of bond measures, it would open a community college campus in Northeast, it is to be snatched away by the Mayor in another appalling and crooked deal. Apparently, Northeast LA, which has a history of incompetent and shameful neglect by these same Board members, shall continue to be discriminated against in the use of our own bond funds. Our young adults are not worthy of a full program of credit and non-credit community college classes taught elsewhere (including some Workforce activities). We will be expected to continue to pay the taxes on our property but that money will be used to open community college facilities in other parts of town. This disparate impact of services offerd by LACCD is discriminatory.

So there will be for at least five years, and probably much longer, a charter high school that has no business whatsoever being located at this taxpayer-funded community college site. Could the Alliance High School go somewhere else to clear the way for community college courses for the intended beneficiaries of the campus? You bet. Will Alliance leave? If you just stepped into a $24 million new classroom building built by the taxpayers for someone else who had been pushed out for you, would you want to move? Hell no. Life is so sweet at the VDK!

But as the sad sack history of LACCD political intrigue will soon demonstrate, the Alliance Charter High School and the parents of the children there are about to get a rude awakening. The adaptive re-use of the second building, the historic Van de Kamps Bakery building, is almost complete. And Trustees Sylvia Scott-Hayes and Mona Field have a surprise for the parents.

They are pushing a City of Los Angeles lease of this building, located a few feet from the charter high school, to improperly install more non-community college activities. And they are trying to hide from the public the target beneficiaries of these programs: expungement classes for former criminal offenders, including sexual offenders; job search computer terminals for the most desperate low-skilled workers of the City; the training of solar panel installers to be shuttled into the ever-growing Department of Water and Power union control of IBEW 18 and “boss” Brian D’Arcy; and similar health care programs in the County Health Department under the union control of SEIU.

We and the communities of Northeast LA support and value the workforce and second opportunity programs being funded by a massive infusion of funds from the Federal government. These programs are properly placed at more than 18 Worksource locations throughout the county including some a mile down San Fernando Road from Van de Kamps. None of those Worksource centers are immediately adjacent to or in the same buildings where young ninth grade high school students are present. They will be at Van de Kamps.

We wonder if the parents of the students of Alliance High School have been told who are the target users of the historic Van de Kamps building. Are they comfortable with such a configuration? Are they demanding answers about who thought up such a plan? Do they know it was the Mayor and LACCD officials? Will they cheer when Villaraigosa shows up for the inevitable photo op or will he be booed as happens so often these days?

And what are the taxpayer/voters of Northeast Los Angeles thinking as they write their check to the County Tax Collector? They already know that LACCD staff illegally used $7.1 million of community college bond funds to DESTROY CLASSROOMS at this site so that the Mayor’s program administrators could have their own private executive administrative office space in the bakery building. Are they wondering if more competent candidates to replace Sylvia Scott-Hayes and Mona Field will throw their hats in the ring?

The Van de Kamps Coalition is not going to rest until this campus is properly used by the LACCD for those it is intended to benefit. Learn more at http://www.vandekamps.org/

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LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY ACTIVIST ACTION ALERT!

MAYOR VILLARAIGOSA ‘S MESSAGE TO HISTORICALLY UNDERSERVED COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS: EXECUTIVE OFFICES FOR MY PROGRAMS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR ACCESS TO EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY.

THIS WEDNESDAY, LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT BOARD WILL CONSIDER GIVING NO-BID SWEETHEART LEASE TO CITY OF LOS ANGELES AFTER $6.3 MILLION OF SCHOOL BOND FUNDS WERE USED TO ILLEGALLY CONVERT CLASSROOMS INTO EXECUTIVE OFFICE SUITES FOR UNEMPLOYMENT PROGRAMS FUNDED BY FEDERAL ECONOMIC STIMULUS FUNDS DIRECTED BY THE MAYOR.

Van de Kamps Coalition Urgently Seeks Los Angeles Residents to Call or E-mail LACCD to Protest The Lease Of The Campus When LA City College Should Be Offering A Mix Of Profit-Oriented Classes That Would Allow Van de Kamps to Open

Executive Administrative Offices Place At Risk The Entire Future of Van de Kamps As A Community College to Serve Underserved and Relatively Isolated Hispanic and Minority Students That Could Attend Community College at Van de Kamps

What Your Voice Can Help Accomplish Now:

Your telephone call or e-mail demanding that the LACCD Board of Trustees vote against the Mayor’s Political Theft of Van de Kamps can defeat for a second time the effort of LACCD staff to “hand off” the brand new $72 million community college campus. Defeat of the City’s Lease will force the LACCD to return the campus to community college use. All economic viability studies done by LACCD showed overwhelming demand and financial viability to succeed.

Can you help by making a quick phone call or sending a quick e-mail to the Board and other public officials?

THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOU TO SPEAK BLUNTLY TO LACCD BOARD MEMBERS AND THE MAYOR ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK OF THIS SCHEME.

A draft letter to the officials of Los Angeles Community College District and other officials is set forth below. The proposed letter below is self-explanatory. Details about the controversial conversion of the historic Van de Kamps Northeast Satellite Campus of LA City College into a “commercial leased-tenant facility” to benefit unemployment programs funded by the Mayor are found at http://www.vandekamps.org/.

This Wednesday, May 26, 2010, at the meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District (“LACCD”), the Board will consider a resolution to hand most of the Van de Kamps Building over to the City which in turn will sublease it to the same unemployment programs it tried to give it to in mid-April. You can view the resolution yourself at:

http://www.laccd.edu/board_of_trustees/board_agendas/

The resolution is on pages 155-156 of the Adobe pdf of the posted agenda package for May 26, 2010 available for download and viewing.

The Van de Kamps Coalition, for almost a decade, worked to save the historic Van de Kamps bakery building and helped former State Senator Richard Polanco and LACCD officials to bring a Northeast Campus of Los Angeles City College to an area of the City that LACCD’s own studies showed were historically underserved by the District. We need your voice to hold LAACD to its promises.

IF YOU ARE AVAILABLE ON WEDNESDAY, May 26, 2010 at 3:30 p.m., your voice and/or appearance is requested to support this key resolution:

Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees Meeting
West Los Angeles College Campus
Fine Arts Theatre, Room FA 100
9000 Overland Avenue
Culver City, California 90230

IF YOU ARE NOT AVAILABLE ON WEDNESDAY:

The Van de Kamps Coalition is asking Los Angeles residents from all over the City to telephone to express outrage over the propose loss of the brand new $72 million community college campus to executive offices and a few training rooms for unemployment programs.

IF YOU CAN MAKE A TELEPHONE CALL, CHOOSE ANY ONE OR TWO OF THE FOLLOWING:

LACCD Board of Trustees Secretary (213) 891-2044
Chancellor of LACCD (213) 891-2201
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (213) 978-0600 or (213) 978-0721

IF YOU CAN SEND AN EMAIL TO PUBLIC OFFICIALS:

Cut and paste the draft letter below to the list of recipients to put Van de Kamps back on a path to be the Satellite Campus of Los Angeles City College at the historic Van de Kamps Bakery.

CUT AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING E-MAIL ADDRESSES INTO YOUR “TO” ADDRESS:

mayor@lacity.org, councilmember.garcetti@lacity.org, councilmember.reyes@lacity.org, assemblymember.deleon@assembly.ca.gov, larry.frank@lacity.org, georgia@gmercer.net, mailto:candaele@sbcglobal.net,%20mfield@laccd.edu, mfield@glendale.edu, mona.field@gmail.com, tpark@email.laccd.edu, nancysuepearlman@aol.com, msantiago@email.laccd.edu, justincl@laccd.edu, webmail@da.lacounty.gov, vdkcoalition@gmail.com

CUT AND PASTE THIS LETTER INTO THE BODY OF YOUR E-MAIL (EDIT AS NEEDED FOR YOUR COMFORT WITH THIS ISSUE) AND ADD YOUR NAME AT THE END:

May 24, 2010

RE: Reject City Lease Of Van de Kamps Building; Return the Van de Kamps Campus to Community College Purposes Promised to Voters for A Decade

Dear LACCD Trustees and Mr. Mayor:

I am writing in opposition to Com. No. FPD3 on the Wednesday agenda of the Los Angeles Community College Trustees for the following reasons:

1. LACCD used $72 million of taxpayer bond monies to build the brand new community college satellite campus for students, not commercial office space.
2. For more than a decade Trustees such as Sylvia Scott-Hayes, Kelly Candaele, and Mona Field have promised voters that they would DELIVER a Northeast Satellite campus to address the unequal access opportunities for young adults in Northeast Los Angeles.
3. The State of California gave $3 million to this campus for the restricted purpose of a Satellite Campus of LA City College, and this action takes away the Satellite Campus.
4. The voter approved Measures AA and J that allocated $60 million of new taxes to develop this high priority community college access opportunity.
5. LACCD staff have ignored two economic feasibility studies showing Van de Kamps can be initiated as a successful campus with both profit-oriented and traditional community college classes.
6. These studies mean that the Board has no substantial evidence to support its proposed “finding” that that the Northeast Campus buildings are NOT NEEDED for community college purposes. They are needed now!
7. The City funded unemployment classes may properly be included among the possible profit-oriented classes offered at Van de Kamps, but the placement of executive administrative offices in 60% of the school building is highly offensive to the core mission of the Los Angeles Community College District.
8. LACCD and City of Los Angeles joint actions improperly discriminate against the historically underserved and predominately minority communities. The action tell our young adults they are not deserving of a community college.

For the above reasons, the LACCD must begin offering as many community education classes (non-credit fee-based classes like computer skills, artistic endeavors, conversational foreign languages, creative writing, etc.) and contract classes (employer paid skills training) as possible. This is the positive path to establish the Van de Kamps campus as a financially self-sustaining Satellite of LA City College.

I join the Van de Kamps Coalition and urge you to halt ill-conceived efforts led by your former Chancellor to abandon promises you made to open Van de Kamps under LA City College supervision. The effort to hand this $72 million new campus over to tenants of the Mayor’s Office, instead of maintaining City College stewardship, will be an action remembered by voters at the next election. If there is a vote to approve this ill-conceived LACCD staff proposal, I know I will not forget how the LACCD Board helped Mayor Villaraigosa literally steal this campus away the community it is intended to serve.

Most sincerely,
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VAN DE KAMPS COALITION UNCOVERS LACCD "GUTTER TALK" DISDAIN FOR OFFICE OF ASSEMBLYMEMBER KEVIN DE LEON QUESTIONS

The Van de Kamps Coalition continues its ongoing investigation of the REAL reasons the Los Angeles Community College District transferred the Northeast Satellite Campus out of the hands of Los Angeles City College and into the hands of District Administration under the direction of Chancellor Mark Drummond. The Van de Kamps Coalition has uncovered a "shocking" misuse of standard American English by the esteemed former Chancellor of LACCD.

Just over a year ago, representatives of the Office of Assemblymember Kevin de Leon sought answers to questions regarding rumored changes in use of the $72 million Satellite College scheduled to open at the historic Van de Kamps site in Fall 2009.

In April 2009, word was leaking out of Los Angeles City College that the District planned to take the campus away from the College. Instead of offering the full schedule of community college classes promised for more than a decade, word was the District was trying to unload the buildings to "commercial lease tenants" to make the site a revenue stream for the District's general fund. This disastrous policy decision was being questioned not only by the community but the Assemblymember too.

Field Representative Alana Yanez of De Leon's Office forwarded a series of questions to LA City College President Jamillah Moore. Moore deflected direct answers by telling Yanez she would follow up with a telephone call. Moore then sent a copy of the questions to LACCD Chancellor Dr. Mark Drummond. Dr. Drummond had just two words in response. Well, really neither of them were words used in standard American English taught in the classrooms of LACCD. Instead, Dr. Drummond used the crude street vernacular to refer to Assemblymember DeLeon's inquiry: "fuk em" he wrote in reply to Dr. Moore's e-mail. Click here to download "fuk em" email (pdf file)

Now this non-standard English form grates the nerves like squeaky chalk on a blackboard. It makes one ask: "What kind of a role model is the Chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District for our young adults if he chooses to use non-standard American English in a business setting?" It's "shocking". Simply "shocking". Every good English teacher would instruct a student that the proper usage of that phrase is "Fuck them" and don't omit the proper punctuation! It would be either a period or exclamation point, depending on the Chancellor's mood in the middle of the afternoon.

Of course, persons of greater taste would counsel avoidance of the use of such trash talk when referring to a member of the State's Assembly in the first place. But at LACCD, neither the public nor elected officials are entitled to respect and accountability by community college officials. The full e-mail string is set forth below.

On a more substantive note: The fact that Dr. Drummond was cussing out anyone who dared to question his hand in the withdrawal of the Center Status application, strongly suggests that voters do not yet know the real story of why Dr. Drummond and some of the LACCD Board members began pushing an effort to hand one building over to the Mayor's favorite charter high school (Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools) and to hand the historic bakery building over to the City of Los Angeles for a bunch of unemployment projects funded with Economic Stimulus money from the federal government. If the City really wanted to stimulate the economy with those funds, it should have been renting private sector office space. Isn't that the idea of the Economic Stimulus package? Apparently not as envisioned by Antonio Villaraigosa and his Deputy Mayor Larry Frank who are intent to hand the Stimulus money to a bunch of SEIU and Workforce Union buddies. That is worthy of a few choice words, but most of us are more polite than the trash talking former Chancellor of LACCD.

One more note: For more than a year, the LACCD has NOT made hundreds of thousands of dollars of exercise equipment procured with federal grant funds obtained by Congressman Becerra available in any community room. President Moore's "assurance" that such equipment would be made available to the community remains another broken promise to Northeast LA. At LACCD, disrespect of elected officials is an equal opportunity offense: both state and federal officials get no respect.

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COALITION OBTAINS E-MAIL SHOWING LACCD OFFICIALS KNEW THEY WERE MISREPRESENTING THE FACTS ABOUT VAN DE KAMPS

It was just over a year ago that officials of the Los Angeles Community College District announced that Los Angeles City College "could not open the Van de Kamps Satellite Campus of Los Angeles City College" due in part because adjoining community college districts would not give letters of support for the new satellite campus. LACCD officials claimed in meetings with Northeast community organizations that the District could not obtain "Center Status" for Van de Kamps which would provide a source of administrative funding for the site. They publicly blamed this in part on what Los Angeles City College President Jamillah Moore had claimed was the inability to get letters of support from officials at the nearby community colleges.

New records obtained by the Van de Kamps Coalition from the LACCD pursuant to its obligation to provide records in a pending environmental law case now reveal that LACCD Board member Sylvia Scott-Hayes knew that the claims of Dr. Moore to the public about Center Status support letters were false. Below is a copy of an e-mail sent by Sylvia Scott-Hayes to Dr. Jamillah Moore on May 7, 2009 after Dr. Moore sent an e-mail to both LACCD Board of Trustees members Sylvia Scott-Hayes and Mona Field thanking them for "coming out last night to the town hall. The faculty and staff of LACC [Los Angeles City College] greatly appreciate the support and assistance of the district in the operations of the Northeast Center [at the Van de Kamps Bakery]. Thank you!!!" The bracketed material is inserted by the Van de Kamps Coalition to help readers understand the e-mail.

Here is Trustee Scott-Hayes' response to Dr. Moore, copied to Mona Field (click here for email document, PDF file):

"May 7, 2009

Re:Bakery [The transfer of the Van de Kamps Bakery to LACCD Administration]

Jamillah, [Dr. Jamillah Moore, President of Los Angeles City College]

Hope all is well. I have a few comments regarding bakery site. I know you will be handing this problem off soon, but because you are still seen as the main person in the presentations that are taking place [to the community groups in Northeast LA], I think you still need to take the lead for now.

Given recent L.A. Times article, I think we need to rethink the message the presentation you and the LACCD team are sending. I think team needs to re-focus so that it is clear we are putting a satellite there, it's just going to be an LACCD site [District Administration run] instead of an LACC site [Los Angeles City College run]. We should rethink adding a few transfer classes, I'm sure ELAC [East Los Angeles Community College] will be interested. I suggest we regroup and set up a meeting with all before you guys go out and do another presentation [to the Northeast Community].

I know for a fact there are a group of disgruntled individuals who already have a game plan as to how to discredit what we are doing at bakery site--especially those who have issues with charter school. This can quickly turn into a nightmare if we don't address this in a smart way. [Scott-Hayes fears and disparages the Van de Kamps Coalition]

I also have heard from PCC [Pasadena Community College] board members, they want to know who refused to provide a support letter for us acquiring center status [at Van de Kamps] because they said they do NOT have any problem providing us with a letter of support. I also spoke with Glendale [Community College District] board member who thought we could sit down and work something out. If these colleges [Pasadena and Glendale Community Colleges] start getting calls from a legislator and they hear something different from them than what you stated at the community meeting it can be a real problem. I only tell you this because we need to get a strong handle on this project before it blows up in our faces.

Sylvia [Sylvia Scott-Hayes, Trustee on the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees]"

ANALYSIS:

The Van de Kamps Coalition notes that after this e-mail, neither Trustee Scott-Hayes nor Trustee Mona Field did anything to change direction to try to hand off the Van de Kamps campus buildings to outside programs supported by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa: 50% of the campus was leased to the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools and the other 50% was proposed to be leased to three favorite unemployment programs funded by the Mayor's office through the Workforce Investment Board. These two trustees knew their staff was lying to the public about the reasons Van de Kamps was about to be transferred to District Administration. These trustees supported Los Angeles City College abdicating its responsibilities to program the Van de Kamps campus with both profit-making classes (to cover operating costs) and traditional credit courses (to offer educational opportunity to transit dependent young adults in Northeast Los Angeles).

This is shameful revelations that now take responsibility for misconduct involving Van de Kamps to members of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District.

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REMINDER: VDK COALITION "NATIONAL BEVERAGE DAY" FUNDRAISER

Celebrate "national beverage day" with a cool brew and tasty eats at Eagle Rock Brewery for a Fundraiser for Van de Kamps!

Eat tasty appetizers made by Netty’s & Crew and drink the original artisanal local brews of our own EAGLE ROCK BREWRY

Save the Van de Kamps Satellite Campus for our students.

When: May 6th, 6PM to 10PM

Where: Eagle Rock Brewery

3056 ROSWELL ST. L.A. 90065 ph: 323-257-7866

Donation : $30.00 (no host bar)

RSVP and purchase your tickets through PAYPAL or SEND A CHECK to the VDK Coalition at 236 South Avenue 60, LA Ca 90042

For more information call: 323-855-0764

The Situation: Recently, the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District voted to take away our community college at Van de Kamps before it was even constructed! Instead, the Board installed tenants inside our campus buildings: without competitive bidding the "FOAs" -- Friends of Antonio Villaraigosa -- took over. The Board was so nice to the FOAs that it wasted over $7 million of our bond funds (our taxes) to improve the buildings for the desires of the FOAs and in the process destroyed the classrooms intended for our students in Northeast LA. They think our Northeast Neighborhoods will quietly take anything they do to us. We don’t have to take this sitting down. The Van de Kamps Coalition is launching "Bring Back Our College" -- ways to hold LACCD accountable, for a change.

Click here to download flier (pdf file)

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LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY ACTIVIST ACTION ALERT!

THOSE WHO WOULD DEPRIVE NORTHEAST LA YOUTH OF A COMMUNITY COLLEGE AT VAN DE KAMPS ARE IN RETREAT THANKS TO YOU!


WE CAN RAISE OUR VOICES TO BRING BACK THE VAN DE KAMPS COMMUNITY COLLEGE SATELLITE CAMPUS PROMISED BY THE LACCD BOARD OF TRUSTEES!

It appears the Los Angeles Mayor’s office has pulled the unemployment programs out of Van de Kamps in the face of your e-mails and letters two weeks ago. Thank you for raising your voice.

Now we must demand that the Los Angeles Community College District Board ask the State Controller and law enforcement officials to investigate the wrongdoing at Van de Kamps. The job will not be done until the wreckage at Van de Kamps is cleaned up by outside investigators.

Can you help by sending a quick e-mail to the board and other public officials?

The Van de Kamps Coalition hates to ask you in such a short time period to take further action, but your voice is critical in pushing the LACCD Board of Trustees to do the right thing.

A draft letter to the officials of Los Angeles Community College District and other officials in set forth below. The proposed letter below is self-explanatory. Details about the controversial conversion of the historic Van de Kamps Northeast Satellite Campus of LA City College into a “commercial leased-tenant facility” is found at http://www.vandekamps.org/.

This Wednesday, April 28, 2010, at the meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District (“LACCD”), the Board will consider two competing resolutions. You can view these resolutions yourself at: http://www.laccd.edu/board_of_trustees/board_agendas/

The resolutions are on pages 6-10 and 14 of the posted agenda package.

In one resolution, drafted and put on the Board’s meeting agenda by the Van de Kamps Coalition (“VDK Coalition”) would require the Chancellor to:

1. Order the securing and preservation of all Van de Kamps construction project records until public authorities can investigate possible wrongdoing.

2. Request that the State Controller’s Office conduct a Special Audit of Van de Kamps to determine the amount and responsibility for misspent Proposition 39 Bond funds that the VDK Coalition estimates to be about $7.1 million.

3. Request the assistance of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, County Counsel’s Office, and/or the Attorney General’s Office in making civil recovery of the lost funds to restore the public’s bond funds.

4. If a basis exists under the state law, to halt further invoice payments to the contractors at Van de Kamps who voluntarily participated in the wrongful destruction of classroom designs and substitution of tenant improvements to benefit the Workforce/Worksource unemployment programs the Los Angeles Mayor’s office wanted to install in the historic Van de Kamps Bakery Building.

Board Trustee Miguel Santiago, who has been a champion on the LACCD Board of Trustees for an investigation of the Van de Kamps, has offered an alternative resolution. His resolution would order:

1. The Chancellor of LACCD to order the Inspector General, once he or she is hired by the LACCD Board, to conduct a review of the appropriateness of the expenditure of bond dollars for the Van de Kamps site.

2. The Inspector General to conduct an investigation of Van de Kamps within the first two months after the Inspector General is hired by the District.

3. That upon advice of the District’s General Counsel, the Inspector General’s Report be reviewed by the attorneys defending the District against the pending California Environmental Quality Act lawsuit to “ensure that the report does not jeopardize the District’s position in the litigation.”

4. That upon advice of the District’s General Counsel, “all portions of the report that do not need to be privileged be published in order to assure accountability for use of bond dollars.”

While the VDK Coalition appreciates the spirit in which Trustee Santiago sought to offer an alternative resolution to conduct an investigation in-house, unfortunately, the District’s General Counsel has intervened into his resolution to provide a basis for the LACCD’s staff to say it is conducting an investigation of the truth, and then decide for itself what part of the truth the public needs to know.

How else can anyone construe the language of the District’s Resolution that says the District will release all portions of the report that “do not need to be privileged”? What? “Do not NEED to be privileged”?

In this context, the only privilege that might exist is communication LACCD staff had with the General Counsel that constituted advice in the context of an attorney-client relationship. It depends upon the facts surrounding the communication. Yet the General Counsel has inserted herself into Trustee Santiago’s resolution: She argues that what will be withheld from the public will depend upon the NEED to be privileged. And precisely who will decide the NEED to be privileged? The Inspector General? The LACCD Board who hires and fires the Inspector General? The District’s General Counsel? How long has the General Counsel been withholding from the VDK Coalition and other members of the public records she thinks “need to be privileged” instead of records that “are privileged under state law”?

This claim is incredible. It is a guarantee that the District’s General Counsel will later to provide a NEED to withhold information on a dubious claim it is “privileged.” The VDK Coalition is unaware of how a report on financial transactions concerning a public works project would contain any attorney-client privileged information in the first place. It should simply report the facts shown in the project records, and draw conclusions, including whether laws or rules were broken. That is what an Inspector General does. And the LACCD’s bond counsel has already issued a memo stating tenant improvements are NOT lawful expenditures under Proposition 39 restrictions in California’s Constitution.

And since when does the LACCD’s possibly losing a California Environmental Quality Act case because the truth came out, trump the right of the public to know how its money has been spent (or misspent)? The suggestion is preposterous. The District’s interest in not losing a pending case cannot override the public’s greater interest in obtaining the truth about misspent bond funds and hold LACCD staff accountable for its actions.

The Van de Kamps Coalition, for almost a decade, worked to save the historic Van de Kamps bakery building and helped former State Senator Richard Polanco and LACCD officials to bring a Northeast Campus of Los Angeles City College to an area of the City that studies showed needed an access point to the community college system. We need your voice to hold LAACD to its promises.

IF YOU ARE AVAILABLE ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 2010 at 3:30 p.m., your voice and/or appearance is requested:

Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees Meeting
Los Angeles Harbor College
Seahawk Center – 2nd Floor
1111 Figueroa Place
Wilmington, CA 90744

IF YOU ARE NOT AVAILABLE ON WEDNESDAY:

The Van de Kamps Coalition is asking Los Angeles residents from all over the City to cut and paste the draft letter below to the list of recipients to help demand that the LACCD Board to Trustees bring in outside persons, free from any LACCD authority, to properly investigate the wrongdoing at Van de Kamps.

CUT AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING E-MAIL ADDRESSES INTO YOUR “TO” ADDRESS:

mayor@lacity.org, councilmember.garcetti@lacity.org, councilmember.reyes@lacity.org,  senator.cedillo@sen.ca.gov, assemblymember.deleon@assembly.ca.gov, larry.frank@lacity.org,  georgia@gmercer.net, candaele@sbcglobal.net, mfield@laccd.edu, mfield@glendale.edu, tpark@email.laccd.edu, nancysuepearlman@aol.com, msantiago@email.laccd.edu, justincl@laccd.edu,  webmail@da.lacounty.gov, vdkcoalition@gmail.com

CUT AND PASTE THIS LETTER INTO THE BODY OF YOUR E-MAIL (EDIT AS NEEDED FOR YOUR COMFORT WITH THIS ISSUE) AND ADD YOUR NAME AT THE END:

April 27, 2010

RE: Outside Officials Must Investigate LACCD Wrongdoing at Van de Kamps

Dear LACCD Trustees:

I am writing in support of the VDK Coalition’s proposed resolution on your April 28, 2010 meeting agenda.

I am informed that the research and work of the Van de Kamps Coalition reveals likely misuse of up to $7.1 million of voter-approved Proposition 39 bond funds. These funds were used to destroy the classroom designs at the Northeast Satellite Campus of Los Angeles City College at the historic Van de Kamps Bakery and replace them with designs intended to solely benefit the proposed tenants funded by the Mayor’s Office. Additionally, the VDK Coalition, as outlined in its proposed resolution before the Board, has evidence that LACCD staff may have evaded provisions of the Public Contract Code. The VDK Coalition reports that LACCD staff made millions of dollars of changes to the historic Van de Kamps Bakery Building without re-bidding of the project as mandated under state law.

I understand that even LACCD’s bond counsel has informed YOU that these expenditures are illegal and YOU are continuing to spend bond funds to finish the building for a lease arrangement that was withdrawn from consideration at your last Board meeting. I am informed by the Van de Kamps Coalition that the item on the April 28, 2010 meeting agenda to pay over $99,000 for custom cabinetry in the VDK Bakery Building is a continued waste of Measure J bond funds for the benefit of tenant improvements to the building. Why would you approve these expenditures when the Mayor’s tenants have now fled the scene of the crime?

I join the Van de Kamps Coalition and urge you to take strong and decisive action to request the State Controller’s office to conduct a Special Audit and request that appropriate law enforcement officials promptly investigate and seek recovery of the taxpayer bond funds from the responsible parties. The seriousness of the possible wrongdoing is beyond the capacity of the LACCD to internally investigate. This is especially true because LACCD currently has no Inspector General, and when hired, he or she will serve at the pleasure of the LACCD Board. Such an investigation would have no credibility.

When the voters previously supported the LACCD in three bond measure elections to pay for capital improvements and expansion of community college facilities, they certainly never contemplated such unlawful use of our tax funds. I will be watching the outcome of your meeting even though I am unable to attend your Board meeting scheduled this Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. when I am working.

Most sincerely,
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CA Assembly Member Kevin de Leon (45th District) letter to Mona Fields / LACCD

Click here to download letter (pdf file)
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http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a45/
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Reports from bond legal counsel regarding LACCD illegal use of bond funds

- Fulbright & Jaworski report: Recommendations to Insure Compliance with Proposition 39 (PDF file)

-Capstone Advisory Group report: Recommendations for Bond Construction Program (PDF file)
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URGENT! Send a letter to LACCD to Halt Illegal Lease of Van de Kamps

LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY ACTIVIST ACTION ALERT!

PLEASE HELP PREVENT AN UNCONSCIONABLE ACTION BY PASSING THIS EMAIL ON TO YOUR COMMUNITY ACTION ALERT LISTS:

THE VAN DE KAMPS COALITION RESPECTFULLY ASKS FOR A MINUTE OF YOUR TIME TO CUT, PASTE, AND SEND A LETTER OF PROTEST TO THE OFFICIALS OF THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES AND LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT. THE PROPOSED LETTER BELOW IS SELF-EXPLANATORY.

Details about the controversial conversion of the historic Van de Kamps Northeast Satellite Campus of LA City College into a “commercial leased-tenant facility are found at http://www.vandekamps.org/

At a Wednesday, April 14, 2010 meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District (“LACCD”), the Board will consider handing a still-under -construction community college building at the historic Van de Kamps bakery site to an unemployment program funded by the Los Angeles Mayor’s office. The Van de Kamps Coalition, for almost a decade, worked to save the historic Van de Kamps bakery building and helped former State Senator Richard Polanco and LACCD officials to bring a Northeast Campus of Los Angeles City College to an area of the City that studies showed needed an access point to the community college system.

LACCD Board of Trustees Mona Field, Sylvia Scott-Hayes, Kelly Candaele and others are being asked to hand our community college campus over to pet programs of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. According to sources, both $240,000 of federal unemployment monies and this five-year lease are being handed over to a corporation without any competitive bidding. This is being done in unison by City of Los Angeles funding officials and LACCD leasing officials. Even more offensive: The lease of our brand new community college building was arranged by a LACCD Vice-Chancellor who sits on the Board of Directors of the corporation getting this sweet heart deal!

IF YOU ARE AVAILABLE ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 2010 at 3:30 p.m., your voice and/or appearance is requested:

Los Angeles Community College Board Room
770 Wilshire Blvd. (intersection with Flower St.)
(One block north of the Red Line Metro/7th Street station)

IF YOU ARE NOT AVAILABLE ON WEDNESDAY:

The Van de Kamps Coalition is asking Los Angeles residents from all over the region to cut and paste the draft letter below to the list of recipients to help stop this outrageous, indeed, illegal action of our public elected officials.

If you are unhappy with the way Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is running the City, here is a small way for you to send a message to him about the questionable practices of his office.

CUT AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING E-MAIL ADDRESSES INTO YOUR “TO” ADDRESS: CLICK HERE TO SEND EMAIL

CUT AND PASTE THIS LETTER INTO THE BODY OF YOUR E-MAIL (EDIT AS NEEDED FOR YOUR COMFORT WITH THIS ISSUE) AND ADD YOUR NAME AT THE END:


April 13, 2010

RE: Proposed Community Career Development, Inc. Lease of Van de Kamps Campus

Dear LACCD Trustees:

As construction crews work to finish the construction of what was supposed to be the Northeast Campus of Los Angeles City College at Van de Kamps, I am informed that an offensive “bait-and-switch” is about to take place. Even former State Senator Richard Polanco has de-cried the “shenanigans” of Los Angeles Community College District officials in engineering a diversion of the $72 million Van de Kamps campus away from its community college purposes.

I am writing in support of the research and work of the Van de Kamps Coalition that has revealed the proposed lease of the historic Van de Kamps Bakery building by the above-referenced workforce center corporation is the product of collusion of Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) officials and the Office of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The grant of this five-year renewable lease of a brand new, under construction community college campus building to a private unemployment program politically linked to the Mayor’s office is a highly offensive use of a school district facility and funds.

This is not what voters approved LACCD to spend bond funds to build. The historic Van de Kamps Northeast Campus of Los Angeles City College must be opened for adult, for-credit educational opportunity as YOU promised the voters. The Mayor needs to keep his hands off our community college buildings instead of conducting photo-op press conferences in front of them.

It is my understanding that this contract was planned and arranged by LACCD Vice Chancellor Marvin Martinez who happens to also serve as the Secretary to the Board of Directors to Community Career Development, Inc., the corporation to whom LACCD is proposing to give our community college building in this five-year lease. It is also my understanding that the City of Los Angeles, through the Mayor’s office, may have violated Federal procurement policies by handing at least $240,000 of Workforce Investment Board monies to Community Career Development, Inc. without the required competitive bidding for the set up of a new workforce center at Van de Kamps.

It is also my understanding that Community Career Development, Inc. is being given a lease of this Van de Kamps building without any competitive bidding by LACCD officials as would normally be required under state contracting laws. It is also my understanding that LACCD officials refuse to comply with environmental laws to assess the impacts of the more intense land use proposed under the lease.

Even more outrageous, the Van de Kamps Coalition reports that up to $7.1 million of constitutionally-restricted bond funds approved by voters have been spent by LACCD staff on destroying the original plans for the classrooms at Van de Kamps, converting them to mostly office space and a few small training rooms for workforce unemployment programs that should be housed in private office space elsewhere. About $1 million of short-lived assets such as computers, monitors, audio-visual equipment and other items have been purchased by LACCD staff for this lease tenant illegally using bond funds to do it. These short-lived assets will be exhausted by Community Career Development, Inc. before our community college students will ever use them under the current five-year lease. I understand that even LACCD’s bond counsel has informed YOU that these expenditures are illegal and YOU are continuing to spend bond funds to finish the building for this lease arrangement. This is malfeasance in office if you spend this money knowing it is unlawful to do so.

While workforce centers are an important component to addressing job losses in the current economic downturn, these programs have sufficient federal funding to pay rent in more appropriate office space. Investment of these federal dollars in private sector office space ought to be a priority, instead of handing millions of dollars of subsidized community college facility space to a corporate Board of Directors on which your own Vice-Chancellor sits. This entire transaction is illegal under state law and you must reject the misguided efforts of some of LACCD staff to steer this lease to the Mayor’s politically-favored corporation.

I join the Van de Kamps Coalition in calling for an investigation of this serious conflict of interest by your Vice Chancellor in this transaction because any contract in which he played a role is null and void under the State’s Conflict of Interest Law, Government Code Section 1090.

When the voters previously supported the LACCD in three bond measure elections to pay for capital improvements and expansion of community college facilities, they certainly never contemplated such unlawful use of our tax funds. I will be watching the outcome of your meeting even though I am unable to attend your Board meeting scheduled this Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. when I am working.

Most sincerely,
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