Board as hell
Stakes high in usually lackluster PCC election
By Jake Armstrong 10/01/2009
Questions of leadership and budget savvy hang heavy over the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees election on Nov. 3, with seven candidates in the fray for three contested seats.
A year of tumult at PCC — from the budget crisis that wasn’t to the mysterious resignation and job-shuffling of President Paulette Perfumo — has brought out a small field of challengers seeking to unseat incumbents on a board criticized for lacking leadership and being out of touch with students’ needs.
In Area 1, which represents the Arroyo, La Cañada Flintridge and Altadena areas, Steven Gibson is challenging Trustee Geoffrey Baum. The contest for Area 3, representing Northwest Pasadena, pits incumbent Trustee Connie Rey Castro against challenger Berlinda Brown. And in Area 7, representing Arcadia, Trustee Beth Wells-Miller faces competition from Tony Fellow and Donna Wilson. Trustee Hillary Bradbury Huang is running unopposed in Area 5, which spans South Pasadena, San Marino and Temple City.
Some say the board’s move to cancel a 2010 winter session to make up half of a projected $7.7 million deficit, and its abrupt turnaround to reinstate the session after stumbling across millions of extra dollars in reserves, is a clear sign its members are not working in the best interest of students. Students often use the winter session to pick up extra credits between fall and spring sessions.
Add to that the board’s handling of Perfumo, who was given a substantial raise late last year, then seemingly forced from her post with her $215,000 salary intact following a mysterious leave of absence just months later. “The problem is the board has been out of touch, in general,” said Roger Marheine, a PCC English instructor and president of the PCC Faculty Association, which is endorsing Gibson and Wells-Miller.
Trustees did the best they could with the budget information they had at the time, said Baum, an administrator at USC. When the information changed, the trustees reinstated the winter session, said Baum, the first to support canceling the winter session when the cut was proposed.
But Gibson, Baum’s challenger, said the board too often makes decisions based on budget figures that negatively impact student access to classes, despite an $18 million budget reserve that should give them greater flexibility. “It’s not just making a decision on money,” said Gibson, a former community organizer for the American Friends Service Committee who now attends PCC.
Castro said the board and PCC administrators are serving the college well after a “momentary breakdown in communication,” and voters should return her to the board because she’s well versed in what the college needs after two terms and a career in community college administration.
Brown, a health care manager, thinks the board is out of touch. A Costa Rican immigrant who worked her way through PCC to a new career, Brown said she has a worldview the board does not possess. “I want to bring a fresh perspective of fairness and equity,” she said.
Fellow, a communications professor at Cal State Fullerton, said he wants to give Area 7 a voice of leadership on the board — something he says it hasn’t had under Wells-Miller.
Neither Wells-Miller nor her other challenger Wilson, a telecommunications supervisor from Arcadia, returned repeated calls for comment.
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