The San Joaquin Delta College Board of Trustees addressed the public and sometimes bickered with one another while discussing a grand jury report leveled at the board. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press
In their responses, college staff and trustees defended many of the decisions made about the Mountain House south county satellite campus, the crux of much of the grand jury’s report.
They argued that much of what the jury called a waste of taxpayer money stemmed from unforeseen complications, rising construction costs in an ailing economy and failure of a private developer to live up to its end of a public-private partnership.
It was the first time the board officially shared their response to the report since it was issued this spring.
The two-hour hearing proved barely enough time for trustees and the public to read and debate four out of the grand jury’s 14 findings and none of the nine recommendations, which mostly addressed alleged mismanagement of bond money spent on the planned Mountain House satellite campus.
Trustees will set aside two hours before their regular Aug. 25 meeting to work through the rest of it, they decided at the end of the hearing Tuesday.
Trustees trudged point-by-point through a working draft of the college’s response to the jury’s findings, sending several written responses in the document back for revision.
College and board responses generally disagreed or only partly agreed with the jury’s findings and suggestions.
Overall, several trustees agreed, for different reasons, that the report was too vague.
"It was pretty chicken not to put names down," Trustee Janet Rivera said about the jury’s charges that at least one trustee violated open-government laws by disclosing closed-session information with Gerry Kamilos, the developer of Mountain House. She said it’s a shame all seven board members are maligned because of a few trustees’ alleged indiscretions.
Manteca-Escalon Trustee Ted Simas agreed and offered with Rivera, retiring board president Leo Burke and vice president Greg McCreary to share their phone bills to disclose all the calls they made.
Discussion about the charges of leaking closed-session information pitted soon-to-retire trustee of 33 years Dan Parises against Simas in an accusatory exchange.
Parises charged Simas with leaking information about a closed-session staff evaluation to a reporter. Simas responded by calling Parises a liar and urging him to report the alleged action to the grand jury if he felt strongly enough about it.
Parises also charged the jury with leaking proprietary information to the press. Someone tipped reporters off, he said, by telling them to expect "a scathing report" about alleged trustee misconduct.
Also a source of contention between board members and the several-dozen gathered for the hearing was why the board chose the Mountain House site over land in Tracy in the first place.
Trustees reminded the public that Tracy made it tough for the college to buy land six years ago and that utilities and water rights were at the time more expensive there than what Mountain House offered.
It wasn’t until a series of delays on the part of Kamilos’ company and the economy’s nosedive that the price of the proposed south county campus began to skyrocket, trustees explained.
For half the hearing, Simas, Rivera and McCreary voted contrary to Anthony Bugarin, Parises and Burke, which meant two of the four findings discussed were sent back to college staff for a rewrite.
Simas said he plans to form his own response to the findings in a minority report.
Trustees were ready to read and discuss the responses without circulating a copy of the draft to the public, until a Delta dean backed by most attendees through a show of hands demanded a copy, too.
The request was granted, contrary to the advice of the board’s legal counsel and with objections from a few trustees that the copy was just a draft and unfit for public review.
The board has until Sept. 18 to submit its formal response to the jury. The draft will be discussed at least once more and up for approval by the first board meeting in September.
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