As noted in a prior post, yours truly recorded the AM
portion of the March 18, 2015 Regents meeting because the “Committee of Two”
was slated to report in that session. As it turned out, however, for
interesting reasons noted below, their report was postponed until the
afternoon. (We’ll eventually get to
making a recording of the afternoon session and the other sessions of March 17
and 19.) However, what occurred in the
morning was interesting and not just because of the UC prez’s reaction to a
demonstration. (See another prior post of today.) The session started with public comments.
Included was an obviously coordinated group of folks praising Merced’s “2020”
project which was up for later approval. The 2020 project is a grand scheme by
that campus to expand through a public-private partnership in which private
developers will build a campus extension. Three developers have been chosen to
make proposals: http://www.ucmerced.edu/news/2015/campus-selects-three-teams-participate-2020-project-rfp
For info on the general project plan, see: http://2020project.ucmerced.edu/ We’ll come back to 2020 below.
Anyway, following the puffery on 2020, there were protests
about the Committee of Two, Berkeley’s Gil Tract farm, and Berkeley’s Richmond
expansion, leading to a demonstration.
Police cleared the room and the meeting then proceeded with reports by UC
prez Napolitano and faculty rep Gilly.
The Committee on Finance considered a proposal to float a 100-year bond
to create a revolving fund which would in turn finance various capital projects
on selected campuses. Gov. Brown worried that the Regents would not have
sufficient monitoring authority on the projects. And a student rep deviated
from the 100-year bond to complain that financing student aid from tuition,
effectively subsidizing lower income students from other students’ tuitions,
had reached a limit.
The Committee then turned to the 2020 plan which started
with a standard set of slides presented by Merced chancellor Dorothy Leland.
All was supposed to run smoothly and lead to approval in September but then the
questions began. Gov. Brown noted that having private developers involved
amounted to borrowing in a complex way. It reminded him of the expensive de facto borrowing plan he inherited
from Schwarzenegger and then killed. (A litigated settlement with developers
that resulted was recently reached.) The plan involved selling state office
buildings to developers for upfront cash and then leasing the office space back
from them. Other Regents chimed in that the 2020 plan was borrowing that would
adversely affect UC’s credit rating, even though it was unconventional
borrowing. It turned out that the project had originally been assigned for
review by the Regents’ Building and Grounds committee but mysteriously
transferred to Finance, apparently when objections at the former committee
developed. No one could say, despite several questions from Regents, exactly
how and why the shift in committees was made or who requested it. The 2020 plan
will still be up for further scrutiny in September. But all did not go well for
proponents.
In the link below, 2020 is discussed from about 1:35-3:05,
i.e., for an hour and a half. Gov. Brown’s
questioning begins at around 2:01. Regent Makarechian – with his developer
background – begins his questioning at around 2:11.
It’s rare for Regents to take a harsh look at a
project. But blog readers will remember
UCLA’s Grand Hotel as another such episode. The problem is that at the end of
the day, the projects in question are approved, albeit at a later meeting.
A subsequent meeting Building and Grounds did clear another
Merced project, an office building in downtown Merced. A report on UC’s various green efforts was
presented and the Committee of Two report was deferred until after lunch.
The audio link is below:
The audio link is below:
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