State Board Refuses to Pledge Belmont Funds

SACRAMENTO — While heavy equipment dug deeply into hillsides near downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday to make way for a new high school, state officials meeting here refused to promise $40 million toward the costly campus until Los Angeles Unified School District attorneys prove to them that the project is legal.

State Sen. Leroy Greene (D-Carmichael), chairman of the State Allocation Board, summed up the general frustration that dominated a two-hour board hearing:

“I have more questions than I can find answers for and I have all kinds of answers for which there are no questions.”

The district had risked losing state reimbursement by preparing to pour the foundations of the new Belmont Learning Center later this week without having the project approved by the allocation board. However, on Wednesday, board members--sympathetic to the district’s warning that the anticipated El Nino storms could turn the graded hillsides into a mudslide--voted 4-2 to allow work to go forward without prejudicing a future vote on the project.

Technically, the district does not need state approval to keep building Belmont. But the district is gravely aware that the allocation board’s approval could allow state education bond funds to subsidize up to half of the $80-million cost of constructing the 4,200-student school.

That reimbursement is important to the district on three fronts:

* Financially--The district wants help paying for a school which, at more than $155 million including land, is destined to be the most expensive high school campus ever built.

* Politically--If the state endorses Belmont Learning Center, the district hopes to persuade the citizens committee overseeing the use of local school bond funds to reconsider its refusal to spend those funds on the high school. The use of local bond funds--from Proposition BB, approved by voters last spring--would cost less over the long term than alternative financing the district has already secured.

* Philosophically--Most of all, the district wants state endorsement of the unusual process it used to choose a developer, in which the district sidestepped the usual state laws requiring competitive bidding. If the Belmont Learning Center passes muster, the district hopes to use similar arrangements--which it contends are more efficient--to build other badly needed schools.

Currently, the state has no education bond funds to spare, and only tentative plans to ask California voters to approve more.

Nevertheless, state approval is so important to the district that its development director, Dominic Shambra, told allocation board members Wednesday that the district would back away from its vaunted plan to rent out Belmont’s first floor for commercial use if that notion does not meet the state’s legal litmus tests.

That idea of combining a school with commercial outlets formed the very foundation for the public-private project when it was first presented to the school board two years ago. Without that feature to entice developers, officials said, the district would have had to spend at least $6 million more to build the school.

(In a related development, a lawsuit challenging the legality of the project--filed by two Los Angeles unions--was on the verge of being withdrawn Wednesday after the district tentatively agreed to pay attorneys’ fees, said Jesus Quinones, attorney for United Teachers-Los Angeles.)

At Wednesday’s hearing, Belmont Learning Center opponents pushed for the allocation board to deny or at least postpone approval. They revisited the litany of improprieties they claim have surrounded the proposal and raised some new ones as well. Among their claims was the argument that the district has relinquished architectural control of the project to the developer, Kajima Inc., despite state requirements to the contrary.

“The person who pays the piper calls the tune,” said David Koff, senior researcher with the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union. His union has doggedly opposed the project because it is embroiled in a labor squabble with Kajima on another front.

Koff’s claims appeared to resonate with Greene, who grilled district officials about who is really the boss.

Shambra said the district can turn down any architectural plans it does not like. And, under further questioning by Greene, he insisted it is the district, not Kajima, that holds firing power over the architect.

State Sen. Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton) raised additional concerns about the propriety of combining educational and commercial uses, particularly a grocery store on the same parcel that would sell tobacco and alcohol.

To Shambra’s assurances that both products would be locked up so children could not get to them, Johnston sarcastically said, “Sure, sure.”

None of the allocation board members questioned the district’s assertion that the new school will add 4,200 high school slots to the Pico-Union area. In fact, the school is intended to replace the existing Belmont High and so would add fewer than 1,000 seats.

The future conversion of Belmont High into a middle school was approved by the allocation board Wednesday, but it still must clear the state Board of Education as well.