Construction DELAYS

Agriculture Department bond in moratorium and awaiting validation

Richard Zamora & Carrlyn Bathe Roundup Reporters

The LACCD Board of Trustees placed a districtwide moratorium on bonds designated for the building of new agriculture facilities until the need for the money is studied and validated, according to Donna-Mae Villanueva, dean of the Agriculture Department.

Initially $6.1 billion was allocated across the district with $4.8 billion going toward individual college projects. There were 264 projects throughout the nine community colleges with Pierce topping the list for the most projects at 41, according to a 2011 master building program budget plan that can be found at build-laccd.org.

Certain projects are listed as complete, such as the Center for the Sciences Building. The hold on the rest of the money was placed to reevaluate the remaining projects and their effect according to Villanueva.

“The district wanted to have a better sense of all of the building projects district-wide and to study, before we build anymore buildings, the impact if the district builds out on everything that’s listed here,” Villanueva said.

This delay has stalled the construction on a new horticulture facility to replace the 67-year-old building that is currently in use, according to the agriculture chair Dr. Leland Shapiro.

“The bond provided $19 million dollars to put in a new horticulture facility,” said Leland Shapiro, chair of agriculture and natural resource.

“Our facility is from 1947.”

Shapiro has his own ideas on what he would like to see included with the modernization of the facilities.

“I need one large lecture hall that’s PowerPoint ready and has Internet access,” Shapiro said. “I need two labs, one for soils that could be shared with floristry. The other lab we’d need for plant identification and for CAD. We need a greenhouse, which grows the plants and a lath house, which starts the seedlings and gets them growing and maybe a nursery out there.” horticulture and maintaining a farm come with a set of challenges very different from those found in a typical classroom.

“Animals live 365 days a year,” Shapiro said. “They don’t know it’s Christmas, they don’t know it’s Fourth of July.”

Along with the new facilities, the Agriculture Department requires labor to properly utilize the farm to its fullest potential. Shapiro hopes that a portion of the bonds can be used to hire qualified employees that have the experience to provide the specialized care needed. Pierce used to have fruit and avocado trees and three fulltime employees that tended to the delicate trees.

“When the employees retired those positions were not filled and the trees died from lack of care,” Shapiro said. “If a worker is putting in eight hours a day five days a week, the plants will die. For a farmer, you need to work seven days a week all day long.”

Currently the bond is listed as “Programming RFP 74%” with RFP standing for “Request for Proposal.” This means that the process is still in a preliminary stage.

Pierce College campus projects

Shapiro had spoken directly to Pierce’s president, Kathleen Burke, for help, and a process of evaluating the department’s need has begun.

department’s need has begun.

“I went to the college president and she was very receptive,” Shapiro said. “She said before she commits to hiring a new horticulture teacher and spending money on the program she wanted a validation study done and so they have started that now.” according to Shapiro.

The study will take less than two months but Shapiro is concerned with some of the criteria to which the state may be holding the department.

“The bond provided $19 million dollars to put in a new “The

As the only school in the district that has 200 acres devoted to the study of agriculture, Pierce offers a unique opportunity to its students and the community.

But learning the intricacies of

“I went to the college president and she was very the

“The college has to respond to the state and the state right now is looking at how many degrees, how many certificates per program that you have,” Shapiro said. “If you do not have any they’ll say ‘Why are we funding your program if you’re not doing any degrees or certificates,’ so you need both.”

Many students at Pierce are gathering the skills they will need to move forward in their careers and it is this moving forward that is causing a pitfall for the department,