A MESSAGE FROM THE VAN DE KAMPS COALITION
As the buildings finally rise on the site of the former Van de Kamps (VdK) bakery, we are asking how the almost $71 million dollars of tax payer funding to build a Los Angeles Community College (LACC) North East Satellite Campus turned into 2/3rds of a campus, and a collection of tenants, among them a possible charter school, but without accredited college level classes.
With Prop AA, we specifically voted for an adult education facility. What we are getting is a charter school with a fence decorated with symbols of baked goods, in the words of LACCD “the baking heritage of the community”. Or, as Coalition to Save Van de Kamp’s co founder Netty Carr put it, “it looks like now all we’re getting for $70 million in taxpayer dollars are the cupcake fence and the crumbs.” Mighty pricey crumbs.
The original pre-bond plans included a third building being built through a $20 million dollar fund raising drive. With the Prop AA Bond funded project, we were promised a third building – a multipurpose auditorium that would have facilitated large lectures, movies, and theatrical uses to the benefit of both campus students and the local community.
The two building campus we now have was originally budgeted without the need of ANY bond funding. Who is standing to be accountable for $20 million dollars of value squandered?
The “team” of LACCD players now making the rounds are saying that it’s only the bad economy and budget cuts are to blame. The real story is not so simple and not so innocent. Some members of that team are far from innocent players who deliberately set out to stall the campus into what it is now buildings being leased out by the district to obtain funds from a collection of tenants – not an LACC satellite campus.
Our campus has fallen prey to infighting and politics at the city, LACC, LACCD and the Board of Trustees. Had it been completed at any of the promised completion dates from 2005, 2006 or late 2007 we would have a functioning LACC satellite campus. Period.
First the city tried to hand off the site to developers but the VdK Coalition, and then State Senator Richard Polanco stopped that. Polanco found $3 million in seed money and got the campus construction funded through $61 million in Prop AA bonds that we voted for.
Then the internal LACC and LACCD politics started, resulting in fatal stalling through studies of the already completed studies, and revisions of revisions. The internal foes of this project held it up in every way possible, stalling with make work, expensive studies of studies and endless pointless plan revisions. They know the system well and they knew how to use it, they ran the clock out while building costs escalated and operating funds diminished. They knew full well what they were doing; they knew that every day of delay diminished the chances of the satellite campus ever opening.
Now we are in the final rounds. The Coalition has asked for a complete accounting of all money spent on the project. We’ve been told that will be coming in 2 weeks. Public record act requests are being prepared to get to the bottom of this. LACCD officials are racing to sign contracts with paying tenants and the community is struggling for the promised higher education that is much needed. The VDK Coalition remains fully committed that a viable adult community college with adult educational components goes into that site. We are currently working on a web site that will have a full account of names, timeline, and materials collected over the past 10 years. To be place on our email list, sign up for actions alerts, or to let us hear your thoughts, please email us at vdkcoalition@gmail.com