School Bond Oversight Committee Debates Funding for Belmont Project

VAN NUYS —  The pricey Belmont Learning Center, the focus of much controversy in recent months, continued to stir things up Wednesday night at the first regional meeting of the watchdog committee created to oversee spending of $2.4 billion in school repair funds.

At one point, committee member David Barulich mouthed the words “shut up” to a man in the audience, a proponent of the Belmont project who said committee members would be more inclined to push things along if their children would attend the new school.

“I resent that any person who questions this project is being labeled as a racist,” said Barulich, who represents the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. “That’s just a bunch of crap.”

The 11-member Blue Ribbon Citizens Oversight Committee wrangled for hours in the auditorium at Mulholland Middle School over selecting managers to oversee progress of repair projects and other issues that related to how best to use the money from Proposition BB, the school bond measure that passed in April.

At the top of the list was the $87-million Belmont campus to be built near Temple Street and Beaudry Avenue. Ricardo Velazquez, an English teacher from the Belmont complex area, urged the committee to push forward with plans to review the financing for the project, which the Board of Education approved last month in a 4-3 vote.

Velasquez said the people of the downtown area were being cheated out of having a new school, while their children are bused to other areas because of overcrowding. And he said the committee would move faster if their children were the ones affected by the change.

“The people in that area really need the school now,” he said.

However, an attorney for United Teachers Los Angeles, which filed a lawsuit barring the school district from using proceeds from the bond issue for the Belmont project, urged the committee to take more time and look at all of its choices.

The oversight committee is expected to present recommendations for financing the project to the school board by June 16. At issue is whether to spend more than $40 million of bond funds on the controversial project. But before doing anything, the committee must review design plans, as well as consider every viable financing option, chairman Steve Soboroff explained.

After much debate the committee agreed to meet Wednesday at school district headquarters with accountants, school attorneys and district officials to review the project.

Several parents were also on hand to voice concerns over the project as well as to police how the committee plans to spend their tax dollars.

“I think they need to have factual information before they make any decision on how to spend any of this money,” said former congresswoman Bobbi Fiedler, whose three grandchildren attend school in the San Fernando Valley.

Fiedler said she was disappointed with the presentation of Proposition BB during the election and was skeptical of how the money may be spent. She and her daughter, Lisa Keating, were among a scattering of parents at the meeting.

Proceeds from the bond are slated to be used for new school construction as well as repairing and refurbishing schools. The question is whether the money should go for such a pricey project as Belmont.

But a decision this week by Superior Court Judge Diane Wayne could further delay efforts to use bond proceeds for Belmont. On Monday, Wayne tentatively ruled that if the school district uses any money from the bond it cannot use developer Kajima International for the project. District officials have been negotiating plans with Kajima for more than a year.