Chabot Spectator

Issue date: 3/1/07 Section: Points Of View

Media Credit: Matters, Marc

The Measure B program, which consists of a $498 million bond, is supposed to provide newer, better facilities for Chabot College.

So far, there has been construction to remodel and upgrade several of those facilities, but new construction is slow to start for various reasons.

Jeff Kingston, the new vice chancellor of facilities planning and management, and Eloy Retamal, the previous program manager, have both said that the two to three year planning stage is completely normal.

Kingston remarked Wendesday, "There are a significant amount of projects to go to bid in the year 2007. The benefit of taking time in the design stage is that it will take a lower cost than to fix the problems during construction."

Another hot topic is how much this is all costing the tax-payers and where all of the money is going.

According to the 2005-2006 Measure B Oversight Committee annual report that was released in December 2006, there was approximately $1.03 million spent on design and planning, however a district office source has said that so far $15 million has been spent on design and planning.

Though Kingston could not confirm those numbers he said, "Usually architectural fees are between 8 to 10 percent of the total", you can expect to spend $30 million in designing this project."

This can really be analyzed as the result of the approval of the five year fast-tracking program which ushers in a shorter and smaller plan to upgrade the campus.

This fast-track program was implemented due to a 30 percent increase in commodities values over the last three years. With these values it would have cost closer to $800 million to complete the original planned program.

This was approved while Eloy Retamal was the program manager. Retamal praised the Chancellor of Chabot Los Positas Community College District, saying, "Very wisely the chancellor decided to have everyone look at it and decided that it could be done."

With this approval, the entire program had to be re-engineered within six months. During this time, the district also refinanced a Series A bond which resulted in a $16 million addition to the Measure B bond.

All of this information can be summed up as a way to find a faster and more streamlined plan being followed. However this still takes time to design and approved by various boards and agencies, so the question still remains: Will this all be done?

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