For City College, but against Proposition P

One fall day in the late 1970s in Pennsylvania, as I knelt on the roof of a new house, hammering nails into plywood in the bitterly cold wind, I suddenly realized. My father's advice long ago was right: I needed a college degree.

So I came back to California and settled in Santa Barbara, a few hours drive from where I grew up in Irvine. I attended Santa Barbara City College with the intention of becoming a mechanical engineer and working on renewable energy projects, which I thought was the next thing.

In a required introductory programming course, I discovered that I enjoyed writing software. When I transferred to UCSB, I changed my major to computer science and graduated just in time for the rise of the Internet.

Overall, Santa Barbara City College has changed my life for the better in ways I could not have predicted.

My education there was largely at the expense of California taxpayers, in the hopeful expectation that the beneficiaries of their generosity would become productive citizens and make life better for everyone. It was a good deal for both taxpayers and students.

Today, City College continues to be vital to our community. It must be well managed and adequately funded so that it can continue to fulfill its educational mission in the coming decades.

That brings me to Proposition P, a bond measure announced on the November ballot that would raise $198 million from local property taxes.

Smiling graduates, sending mailers

I first heard about Proposition P when I received a glossy, color mailer with a picture of a smiling college graduate on the cover and photos of buildings in various states of disrepair on the inside.

The latter images were alarming, but they raised questions: If the buildings are in such poor condition, who was responsible for their maintenance? Isn't it just as important to maintain the buildings as to hire the right professors?

The mailer claimed that Proposition P meant “an investment in the future of SBCC without increasing tax rates.”

Measure P would extend for 20 years an $8.50 property tax levy approved by voters in 2008 as Measure V, a previous bond measure to fund infrastructure improvements at City College.

It is true that the tax rate of $8.50 per $100,000 of assessed property value would be the same as that for the bond passed in 2008. But as assessed values ​​have increased, the tax burden would also increase.

The idea that voters would be saddled with a nearly $200 million bond a month before ballots were released also seemed questionable. If so much money was so important, shouldn't they have provided voters with a detailed explanation of why the money was needed, with enough time to make an informed decision?

The numbers behind Proposition P

I decided to investigate the origins of Proposition P. What I found was not comforting.

Santa Barbara City College is in trouble. Part of these problems are due to long-term demographic changes, part are due to technological changes, and part are due to the COVID shutdowns. Part of this comes from not confronting these issues.

The fundamental problem is that college enrollment has been declining everywhere for years.

Enrollment at City College peaked in 2010 at 18,761 full-time students. By 2023, that number had fallen to 11,565, a decline of nearly 40 percent. Of this number of students, which declined sharply in 2023, 39 percent of the courses they took were exclusively online – meaning that students in these courses did not have to set foot on campus.

Families are now smaller and have fewer children. Consistent with national trends, the number of incoming students at City College declined after 2010, then plummeted dramatically during the COVID closures and has remained at that lower level since.

State funding, SBCC's primary source of revenue, is based on the number of full-time students enrolled. As enrollment declines, so does revenue, and in 2016, years of deficit spending are ringing alarm bells.

Then-Superintendent Anthony Beebe hired a state organization called the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team to analyze the SBCC's problems and propose solutions.

According to the team's report, “the university's financial situation remains dire, with a significant structural deficit…” Unfortunately, the university continues to rely on reserves to cover additional expenses. While reserves appear sufficient to offset overspending, a permanent solution is needed as the district is not growing and revenue opportunities are therefore limited.”

That's the problem in a nutshell.

But little has changed since 2016. In six of the last ten years, SBCC has continued deficit spending. The university's adopted 2024-25 budget shows a deficit of $7.4 million.

Dramatic changes are needed

Two fundamental issues need to be addressed: facilities (classrooms, laboratories, and administrative offices) and staffing (teachers, administrators, and other support staff). Drastic changes are required in both areas to accommodate the reduced size and changing needs of the student body over the next twenty years and beyond.

First, facilities. SBCC has far too many buildings for the number of students, and most of these buildings have not been adequately maintained for years and require major repairs.

A term from the “facilities” jargon that is essential to understanding the depth of City College’s problems is the Facilities Condition Index (FCI).

FCI is defined as the costs incurred to bring a building into excellent condition (total deferred maintenance costs) divided by the costs that would be incurred to replace the building from scratch.

For example, let's assume that a building would need $100,000 worth of repairs and that replacing the building would cost $1 million. That would mean an FCI of 10 percent. A building in the FCI range of 5-10% is considered to be in excellent condition, while a building with an FCI of 30% or more is considered to be in poor condition.

According to a report from consulting firm Cambridge West, the average FCI of City College buildings is 43%, with some exceeding 60%.

This indicates an incredible level of neglected maintenance over decades.

Proposition P requires taxpayers to spend $200 million on facilities without a plan for how to reduce the number of buildings either through conversion or demolition or how to keep the remaining buildings in good condition.

One of the few details that Proposition P supporters have shared with us is that the biggest item on their list is an expensive new physical education building — with a total cost of $100 million, of which $65 million comes from Proposition P originate.

Because enrollment decline is the college's primary problem, facilities spending must be focused on the buildings that host the majority of full-time enrollment on campus. The PE building houses the lowest number of students of any major campus building and should therefore be low on the list for more spending, if not demolition.

City College's second major problem is staffing. Salaries and benefits account for 85% of expenses. There is no way to reduce the budget to reflect the huge decline in enrollment without cutting staff.

Although the above report points to dramatically smaller class sizes due to enrollment declines and the ever-increasing costs of CalSTRS and CalPERS pensions, it says nothing about workforce reductions consistent with lower enrollment.

Conclusion

Before Santa Barbara City College goes to the voters and asks for $200 million to document years of poor or no decisions, it needs to engage with the community about the issues it faces and give us a serious, present a detailed and factual solution plan for these problems.

The Board of Trustees and administration owe this to the people who have faithfully supported the College for more than a century and who want the College to succeed and continue to fulfill its promises to us and its students.