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Following up on an issue he originally raised in last fall’s election campaign, freshman Peralta Community College District Trustee Abel Guillen questioned ongoing renovation work on the district’s board room, saying that it should not come before renovation at Peralta’s colleges. 

Guillen’s comments at Tuesday night’s regular trustee meeting, and support from those comments by fellow trustee Cy Gulassa, drew heated rebuttals from Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris and from the normally publicly mild mannered trustee board president, Bill Withrow. 

Meanwhile, following the meeting, the Planet learned that former California Assemblymember Wilma Chan has tentatively agreed to become the sixth member of the Measure A Oversight Committee called for in last June’s Peralta facilities bond measure. That would that one slot on the committee remains to be filled, several months after its called-for organization. The committee has yet to meet. 

Tuesday night’s debate began when Guillen pulled for discussion an item for approval of $249,000 for a contract to upgrade audio visual equipment in the trustee boardroom, located in the Peralta administrative headquarters on East 8th Street in Oakland. That is expected to be the final piece in the boardroom overhaul, which has been ongoing for the past several months and is scheduled for completion in mid-March. 

“I’m trying to understand the rationale of renovating administrative facilities as opposed to dealing with the health and safety needs of the campuses,” Guillen said. “A year from now, I don’t want us not to have money to complete projects like the Laney library renovation. It’s not clear to me what our prioritization of our Measure A [bond] money is.” 

Guillen raised that same point during last year’s election. At an Oct. 17 Laney College debate with incumbent trustee Alona Clifton, who Guillen later defeated, Guillen said that renovating the boardroom at this time reflected “poor planning. The district should never put administrative needs in front of classrooms.” Guillen noted that “they have cushy chairs in the boardroom, while the students have to sit on bad chairs.” 

But with Guillen now sitting in one of those cushy chairs, Chancellor Harris disputed Guillen’s contention at Tuesday’s board meeting, denying that administrative needs were taking priority and saying that “the bulk of the bond money has gone to the colleges.” 

Harris ticked off a litany of problems in the administration that he said needed to be addressed. “The floors were falling down. Equipment was falling down. We have safety issues. The boardroom is part of public access to the district, but we couldn’t get the meetings televised at some point.” 

Harris called the expenditure on the boardroom renovations “a small part of the bond measure expenditure.” 

But the Chancellor appeared to lose his temper after trustee Cy Gulassa expressed agreement with the thrust of Guillen’s concerns. 

“One thing that concerned me was the symbolism of working on [the boardroom] first,” Gulassa said. He said that the board member’s student advisory trustees were “very upset” about the boardroom renovation decision when it was first voted upon by the board last year. “They felt that there were bad conditions at Laney College that weren’t being addressed.” 

After the boardroom renovation vote, Gulassa said that he took a tour of Laney with Laney President Frank Chong “and I was appalled at the conditions. Since then, we have passed Measure A and are moving towards correcting those problems. I’m just concerned about that image that this was the first priority.” 

Harris immediately disputed that contention. 

“This is not the first priority,” he said, then telling Gulassa that “you don’t have to work here. The heat doesn’t work here. It’s freezing in the winter. These are modular buildings that should have been torn down years ago, but they’re still here. The employees who work here in the administrative buildings are just as much employees of the district as the employees who work in the colleges. They shouldn’t be treated as second class citizens.” 

That brought a rebuttal from Gulassa that “despite your eloquence, I stand on my comments.” 

That brought Withrow into the debate, His voice rising, Withrow called the complaints about the boardroom renovation “sound bite communication. Saying that we’re working on the administration building first creates a tension that shouldn’t be there. The boardroom renovation is not at the beginning expenditure of Measure A money. It’s at the tail-end of Measure E, and most of that bond measure money went to the colleges.” 

The Measure E Peralta construction bond was passed by voters in 2000, with all of its money not yet expended. The Measure A facilities bond was passed last June.  

Part of the confusion at Tuesday’s meeting came from the fact that the audio visual contract is projected to be funded with Measure A money. Harris said that the bulk of the boardroom renovation is being done with Measure E money. The distinction between the two bond measures is that while Measure A money can be spent on equipment, Measure E money is limited to construction costs. 

Trustee Linda Handy said that “people are under the mistaken impression that the boardroom belongs to the board. The board uses the room only two days a month, but the staff and the general public use it five days a week. Even though it’s called the board room, it’s not the board’s room.” 

Trustees approved the audio visual contract on a 5-1 vote, with only Guillen voting against it, and the two student trustees abstaining in their advisory votes (trustee Nicky Gonzale Yuen was absent from the meeting). Guillen said following the meeting that his vote on the contract was “symbolic.” 

He added that he spoke with district officials immediately following the meeting, but though he is still seeking a list of priorities for the Measure A expenditures, “I haven’t gotten one yet.”