Elections 2022: COD trustee candidates spar over Palm Springs campus plans, transparency

The weather provided an ominous backdrop to a chippy College of the Desert Board of Trustees candidates forum Thursday night in Palm Desert.

Four trustee candidates discussed how they would address concerns about the school’s transparency as a driving windstorm swept across the Coachella Valley. Setting the tone for the night, Board of Trustees Chair Ruben Perez accused former COD President/Superintendent Joel Kinnamon of “casting a dark cloud over the institution with lies and fear-mongering.”

Perez, a first-term trustee and fieldworker for Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, is defending his east valley seat against Larissa Chavez Chaidez, a former student trustee at COD and current CSUSB student.

Kinnamon is challenging Aurora Wilson, a trustee since 2013, for her mid-valley seat.

Chavez Chaidez and Kinnamon called for reforms and more transparency from college officials. Kinnamon repeatedly said as a board member he would urge the college to hire a forensic auditor to review college spending since he retired in spring 2021 and was succeeded by Martha Garcia.

Wilson and Perez defended their records.

“The college has done as much as it can to be transparent to the public,” Wilson said.

Perez went further.

“I think we’ve gone above and beyond to try to put out our truth and our information as to why it is we’ve made the decisions that we did and where it is we’re getting our data from,” he said.

He also accused Kinnamon of "manipulating the media and a lot of people on campus” into thinking that COD trustees have participated in “backroom deals behind closed doors.” Perez denied those allegations.

Recently, the City of Palm Springs sued the college for what it alleges to be a failure to comply with the California Public Records Act. Palm Springs City Councilmember Christy Holstege and Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez each accused the other last month of participating in alleged backroom deals with COD.

What to do about Palm Springs campus?

Of 10 questions prepared and moderated by college faculty Thursday night, many dealt with how the candidates would address the Palm Springs campus development and the school’s perceived negative publicity, which faculty called “incredibly demoralizing.”

Over the past year, the college has been under fire from the public and elected officials for its decision to reevaluate plans for hundreds of millions of dollars of bond funds approved by voters to build educational facilities across the Coachella Valley.

A majority of the unspent bond funds — over $300 million — has been earmarked for a campus in Palm Springs. And while the current administration has not changed the total dollar amount dedicated to the project since Kinnamon was in charge, it has suggested to the public recently — after months of noncommittal answers about what would be built there — that it will likely proceed with plans much smaller than what Kinnamon envisioned.

The board of trustees reviewed a long-awaited independent report in September that said the school would struggle to attract enough students to support even a campus half the size of plans drawn under Kinnamon before the pandemic.

On Thursday, Kinnamon said the campus was supposed to be "a bold, innovative, futuristic international model for community college delivery of education, not some antiquated facility with boring programs leading to noplace."

But Perez accused him of drawing plans without reviewing essential data. Perez asserted that he would not advocate building anything that he said could potentially "bankrupt the college five years from now."

Wilson implied that Kinnamon touted unofficial campus plans to Palm Springs officials out of turn and without adequate board input.

"If I were a Palm Springs official and then I find out I'm not going to get that, I'd be pretty pissed," she said. "Because again, apparently some promises were made that the board was not aware of."

Kinnamon fired back that the board, including Wilson and Perez, had in 2020 approved a $4.2 million contract with WRNS Studio, an architecture firm, to proceed with draft plans for his vision of the Palm Springs campus. According to a copy of the contract reviewed by The Desert Sun and reported in August, the firm had already completed 50% of draft designs in order to win the contract.

But Wilson said she and the board didn't see those draft designs until Garcia's administration started providing board updates about the Palm Springs project this year.

In 2020, Wilson and Perez voted on another significant contract: They were part of a unanimous board vote to extend Kinnamon’s presidency through 2024 and raise his salary. Kinnamon retired months later in a move that surprised the board, according to Wilson.

Their relationship publicly soured in summer 2021 when Wilson, Perez and Bea Gonzalez, who joined the board after Kinnamon’s contract extension, voted for Garcia to succeed him. Trustees Fred Jandt and Bonnie Stefan voted for Kinnamon’s longtime vice president, Annebelle Nery.

Wilson told The Desert Sun Thursday she believed re-signing Kinnamon was the right decision at the time because of all the uncertainties caused by the pandemic. She added that she stands by her decision to appoint Garcia to succeed him.

Perez previously told The Desert Sun he, too, voted to extend Kinnamon's because the pandemic had recently begun and he felt it was the wrong time for the college to begin a superintendent search.

No one mentioned Thursday that just weeks ago, Chaivez Chadez accused Perez without conclusive evidence of illegally simultaneously taking pay from the college and his Assembly job — a claim Perez denies.

However, there was a degree of misinformation Thursday night about former plans in Palm Springs.

Wilson said that 119 acres of land for a Palm Springs campus off Tramview Road "sat there, sat there and sat there and nothing happened" from 2007 to 2013 when that project fell through.

That's not exactly true.

Although the college never built a campus there before it set its eyes on the site of the mall closer to downtown, a top college consultant, Mac McGinnis, told the board in September that "shovels were nearly in the ground" and site plans had received division of state architect approval, something needed when a community college like COD plans a major new facility. He explained the project collapsed after Southern California Edison backed out of plans to build a solar farm on about half the land.

That land is the subject of another dispute between COD and the city.

More: Palm Springs offers $5.7M for north end land, if COD builds campus at mall site as planned

More: Will city rezone the north Palm Springs property COD wants to sell to home builder?

Wilson was also mistaken about the size of former plans for a learning hotel at the Palm Springs campus once planned at the mall site.

Wilson scoffed at the idea that Kinnamon was planning to build a 300-room learning hotel in Palm Springs.

"Where have you ever heard of a community college with a 300-room hotel?" she said. "The closest one is in Iowa with 100 rooms."

Under Kinnamon, college officials toured that hotel at Kirkwood College in Iowa.

Kinnamon said COD was never looking into building a 300-room hotel. Rather, it eyed an approximately 66-room hotel.

Documents reviewed by The Desert Sun show the college at times under Kinnamon explored building a hotel with between 60 and 100 rooms or so.

But after the forum, Wilson told The Desert Sun she was certain she had seen plans for a 300-room hotel during a board meeting in January or March when consultants walked trustees through a history of plans for the Palm Springs campus.

In fact, a consultant told her in March that the college had been planning to build a hotel with about "20 guest rooms" and "50 villas."

More recently, independent studies funded by the college and Visit Greater Palm Springs have advised against the college building any sort of hotel in Palm Springs.

And, Wilson told The Desert Sun that September's feasibility study that advocated for downsized plans in Palm Springs "showed what could be possible."

For his part, Kinnamon appeared committed Thursday night to his vision of the Palm Springs campus in spite of recent reports suggesting it could be a financial burden to the campus. He said business partners would bring over $2 million of net profit to the table, enough, in his estimation, to offset the $1.5 million campus annual operating costs a recent report said COD would struggle to afford.

Chavez Chaidez said she would be willing to work with the City of Palm Springs and listen and share different points of views about programming for a campus there.

Budget management, labor relations also topics

The moderators also asked candidates to "describe their experience in managing a $110 million dollar budget." That figure is projected to be COD's annual budget.

While Kinnamon cited 20 to 30 years in higher education including nearly doubling COD's budget as enrollment at the school grew under his presidency, the others admitted they have less experience.

"I am not a numbers person, honestly," Wilson said. But she said that she is not afraid to ask for help and has a track record of asking college officials to explain budgetary numbers before board meetings. She also cited decades of experience on boards of local non-profits.

"And when it comes to money, you better believe I'm going to be asking the questions I need to ask," she said.

Perez said he has learned about managing budgets during his last four years as a trustee and he is still learning. He also cited his studies from "one of the most prestigious universities in the world, University of California, Davis, where I graduated with a degree in political science, and I also took some finance courses."

He reiterated that it was his fiduciary responsibility as a trustee not just to build a $345 million campus because it was promised. Rather, he said, trustees should "act responsibly and work with our staff and faculty who are the experts in this industry to come up with a campus that's going to be fiscally responsible and financially prudent for the district."

Chavez Chaidez said her experience as student trustee made her aware of COD's budget complexities, and vowed to do her best to research budget items and vote in a matter that "best serves our students and consult constituents."

Candidates also were asked if they would support collective bargaining and how they would ensure fair pay and benefits for adjunct faculty. Of 116 community colleges in California, COD is one of 32 to offer no health benefits to adjuncts, Catherine Levitt, adjunct association president, told The Desert Sun in July.

All candidates said they would, and Kinnamon went so far as to say, “management may be needing to have that opportunity, as well.”

Candidates received the questions in advance and read from prepared responses and notes to varying degrees.

A link to the full forum is available here: bit.ly/COD-Forum1.

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: Four COD trustee candidates square off in Palm Desert