Elections 2022: COD faculty to host trustee candidates forum Thursday

College of the Desert faculty will host a forum with candidates pursuing two seats on the board of trustees in what are likely the most expensive and highest-profile races in the college's 64-year history.

The four candidates have been invited to participate in a forum at 5 p.m. Thursday in the Cravens Multipurpose Room at the Palm Desert campus. In-person attendance is reserved for college faculty. However, the forum can also be livestreamed by the public at bit.ly/COD-Forum.

The forum will be followed with a meet-and-greet for faculty. 

Over $200,000 in cash and loans has been contributed to the four campaigns, plus another $65,000 to a candidate that has dropped out of the race.

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At stake: where COD should invest hundreds of millions of dollars raised in bond measures to build education centers across the valley; how to address a drop in enrollment since the COVID-19 pandemic began; and, fixing cybersecurity issues that have led to at least two very damaging hacks against the school since 2020.

In one race to represent the mid-valley, former superintendent/president Joel Kinnamon is squaring off against incumbent Aurora Wilson.

In another to represent the east valley, board chair Ruben Perez is facing challenger Larissa Chavez Chaidez, a current CSUSB student and former COD student trustee.

Chavez Chaidez's campaign has received money from Kinnamon and support from Kinnamon's husband, Christopher Parman.

She has accused Ruben Perez of illegally receiving pay from his state Assembly job while he was doing work for the college. Perez denies wrongdoing, and records cited by Chavez Chaidez and reviewed by The Desert Sun as evidence of wrongdoing neither confirm nor disprove her accusation.

Perez said the accusation, prompted by a records request filed by Parman, was proof that Kinnamon has a vendetta against him.

Kinnamon served as the school's president from 2012-21.

Wilson, a trustee since 2013, and Perez, a trustee since 2018, were part of a unanimous vote to extend his contract through 2024 before the college president decided to retire in the spring of 2021.

Their relationship publicly soured after Perez, Wilson and trustee Bea Gonzalez voted last summer to appoint Martha Garcia from Imperial Valley College as his successor.

Trustees Fred Jandt and Bonnie Stefan voted against Garcia's appointment, favoring Kinnamon's long-time vice president and his favorite to succeed him, Annebelle Nery. Nery has since left COD to become president at Santa Ana College.

Kinnamon alleged last summer that politics tainted COD's presidential search, and faculty considered a no confidence vote against Garcia and the three trustees who voted for her.

A vast majority of faculty who spoke publicly during the presidential search expressed their desire to see Nery selected.

“It’s unprecedented,” Faculty Senate President Kim Dozier said after Garcia's selection, for the board to “disregard” the majority voice of the faculty.

Since then, Kinnamon has re-entered the public arena and moved from Palm Springs to Rancho Mirage so he would become eligible to run for Wilson's seat.

He has argued in his campaign that COD has gotten off track under Garcia and the current board, and that the school is failing to deliver on promises made under his administration to build satellite campuses across the west valley with hundreds of millions of funds approved buy voters in a 2016 bond fund that he advocated for.

A group of Coachella Valley residents called Promises Made - Promises Broken has also accused Garcia and the board of "abandoning" plans for college facilities. It has financed media campaigns against her and Wilson, Perez and Gonzalez. The group remains mostly anonymous, and Kinnamon has denied association with it despite using similar rhetoric.

Meanwhile, elected officials from Coachella accuse Kinnamon of breaking promises and abandoning plans to build COD facilities across the east valley. They have expressed support for Garcia and the trustees who support her.

Under Garcia, COD has proceeded with establishing a small student services center in Coachella and much larger $67.5 million plans to expand a campus a few miles away in downtown Indio on Oasis Street. The college also is proceeding with $22 million plans to build a child development education center across the street from its Indio campus.

The Indio campus opened in 2014 under Kinnamon's administration. It could end up being roughly the same size as what's planned in Palm Springs at the side of the old mall on Tahquitz Canyon Way and Farrell Drive.

Currently, more students attend COD from Indio and the east valley than from the west valley.

Garcia and the board considered moving a $30 million automotive education center planned in Cathedral City to Indio before city officials and residents pressured them to proceed with construction at the original location near Highway 111. Garcia said projected "cost overruns" warranted her advice to the board to consider alternate locations.

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Perhaps the biggest issue in this year's races is whether COD should use a majority of its remaining bond funds to build a $345 million campus in Palm Springs and what programs it should offer there.

As president, Kinnamon envisioned a state-of-the-art school largely focused on hospitality and culinary arts. He wanted the school to include a full-service hotel probably run by the college and serviced in large part by students.

The Desert Sun reported that the college spent millions of dollars to partially develop those plans before the pandemic. But for nearly a year, Garcia and a top college consultant gave inconsistent answers to the public about how far along those plans ever got. Last December, the college dismissed its top learning hotel consultant without explanation to the public.

Garcia alleged that Kinnamon did not follow an adequate planning process before hiring consultants to draft designs for the Palm Springs campus, and she has always called to review more data before proceeding with any plans for that location.

A long-awaited independent study funded by the college for about $50,000 released last month asserted that projected low enrollment could cause COD to struggle to finance operating costs for a downsized Palm Springs campus — one less than half the size of what Kinnamon had envisioned and without a learning hotel yet costing roughly the same amount.

Another independent study funded by Visit Greater Palm Springs also called for the school to build downsized hospitality and culinary facilities relative to what Kinnamon envisioned and also did not recommend the college proceed with a learning hotel.

On Friday, the board of trustees will hold a special meeting to compare the two studies, vote on a construction contract for the Cathedral City automotive campus and, amid allegations of broken promises and lacking transparency, review a history of community meetings regarding additional campus sites.

That meeting will begin at 9 a.m. on Friday at the Palm Desert Campus or can be viewed online at: bit.ly/COD-Zoom-Oct.

Jonathan Horwitz covers education for The Desert Sun. Reach him at jonathan.horwitz@desertsun.com or @Writes_Jonathan.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Elections 2022: COD faculty to host trustee candidates forum Thursday