If you look beyond the rhetoric of the Prop S proponents, what’s right isn’t as important as what’s profitable. The SMCC Trustees harboring $100 million of the remaining Prop U money is profitable.
I received a phone call this week from an SMCC student declaring his support of Prop S. Since he was speaking with a non-American accent, I asked him politely where he was from, only to bet hung up on. Are Malibuites aware that only 15 percent of SMCC’s students are residents of Malibu or Santa Monica, the college’s tax base? Eighty-five percent are either students from foreign countries or live outside the community college district. The college district actively recruits foreign students promising them entry into major public American universities i.e., UCLA, Berkeley, etc. Malibuites are bearing the real costs of these foreign students’ education.
A disputed 250 cars per day travel to Santa Monica and back to attend SMCC. What is not in dispute is that there will be an increase in traffic and transient population visiting Malibu daily from Santa Monica to attend the new, proposed, Malibu-based campus of Santa Monica College.
The Proposition S proponents say that the new bond money will restore instructional programs at the college. However, as a capital improvement bond measure, this money cannot be used for programs or for teachers’ salaries. The proponents say that Proposition S will provide job training. Wrong! Last year the SMCC Board eliminated all vocational programs at the college and laid off the instructors. The student body was outraged over these program closures. They fought for money for the classrooms, not buildings, and tried unsuccessfully to use Prop U money, a capital improvement bond measure, to save these cancelled programs and the teachers’ jobs.
The proponents also promise Malibuites ballparks next to the Malibu SMCC campus, yet from what I read, Measure S guarantees no such thing. Remember, senior citizens, study Prop S carefully as there are no senior exemptions.
And that is all I have to say (sure)
Tom Fakehany