To Protect and Serve...Drive to Survive!

To Protect and Serve...Drive to Survive!
Train as if your life depended on it! It does!

Saturday, October 16, 2010

October Project Update and Funding Issues

The PSTI EVOC Project Workgroup met on October 6th (see Meeting Minutes of 10062010).  Vice Chancellor of College District Facilities David Umstot presented an update on Prop S and N Projects, specifically those projects affecting Miramar College and PSTI.  To synopsize, the College District is faced with a $45 million construction cost with a $30 million bond fund source.  The $16 million we were working with for the EVOC Project was in serious jeopardy of being re-allocated to higher priority projects on the Miramar campus.  In addition, the Prop S and N Citizens Oversight Committee and the Chancellor's Office had raised serious concerns over equitable cost-sharing issues related to the PSTI facility.

On October 14th, the San Diego Community College District Board of Trustees met and approved the Chancellor's recommendation to approve allocation of all bond funds to the priority projects on the Miramar College campus, basically shifting the Prop N funds originally earmarked for EVOC to other, higher priority projects at Miramar College.  Essentially, we have now lost our construction funding source for this project.  There has been some discussion about the City and County fronting a third each of the construction costs (approximately $5.33 million each) but with the economic issues facing our government, funding a new EVOC facility is not the priority - people's jobs are.

What does all this mean?  Well, our project work group will meet this Wednesday (October 20th) to determine where we go from here. There are many issues to be addressed beyond just relocating the EVOC to an acceptable site.  All the issues related to NTC redevelopment, our current lease and subleases on site, as well as facility management of the NTC site itself will need to be discussed. In early November, the PSTI Board of Directors will meet to act on any recommendations from our work group as well as determine a new funding strategy and course of action.

As one can imagine, this a major disappointment to the project team.  Although the fall back plan has always been to continue training at Qualcomm Stadium while the new site is being built, we will continue to look for alternative solutions to the much greater issue at hand:  building a state of the art Emergency Vehicle Operations Center training facility.  We are certainly open to your suggestions...
          

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