| Los Angeles, Kern County, CA | November 5, 2013 Election |
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Should A Permanent Campus Be Constructed In Palmdale?By Richard S. BaloghCandidate for Governing Board Member; Antelope Valley Community College District |
This information is provided by the candidate | |
Yes and no. Yes because it would help Palmdale residents. But not on the property that the Board is considering. It has significant health/safety and expansion issues. I advocate that the Board select another site.I am well aware of the need to offer college courses in Palmdale since I taught most of my Astronomy, Geology and Geography class load for some years at the Palmdale Center. I taught more science classes there than on the main campus. When asked to present public lectures to promote STEM at the Center I was the only one to volunteer to do so. I am 100% behind constructing a Palmdale Campus. Students living in Palmdale would certainly benefit from a permanent campus closer to them - a campus that is safe and able to expand as necessary. Therefore, I am not in favor of any campus built on a "fault-rupture hazard zone" or on an "earthquake induced liquefaction zone". The original site south of Barrel Springs Road between 37th and 47th Streets east was known as the College Park site which has both of these hazards present. Since the board is charged in the Trustee Handbook < http://www.ccleague.org/> with making "all decisions in the best interests of the community", I would not consider the "College Park" site to be even remotely appropriate. One has only to go to <http://myhazards.calema.ca.gov> and enter the address of the site to see that several recent faults cross the property where these faults have made the water table very shallow so that there is both a high seismic as well as liquefaction hazard on this property. Recall the two hospital buildings at Sylmar that sank and tilted due to liquefaction during the 1971 Sylmar Earthquake? In addition to health and safety considerations, when I spoke to the Palmdale City Council on February 3, 2010 on an unrelated subject of distance education, an architect at that same meeting presented a map of the site with proposed buildings for review. The room was filled with "the elephant " when everyone saw a map with mostly parking lot space. One councilman asked the obvious question why this is so and the architect explained the seismic constraints. Now consider future expansion of the campus if the College Park had gone ahead - we would have chosen a site that severely limits the potential of growth. There must be a more useable and safer site to build on. The logic of selecting this site as viable escapes me. It is so obvious that I used this site on my Geography 101 take -home final exam asking students what geologic hazards are present that would make this site unacceptable. So, I was relieved to learn that the College Park site is no longer considered viable. But what amazes me is that the new site for planning a Palmdale Campus, located on the west side of 25th street east between Avenue S and Pearblossom Highway has the same hazards! In this AV Press story < http://www.avpress.com/article-detail.php?articles_id=30106783> It states that "startup of construction could be delayed if a mandated environmental impact report requires the college to perform certain tasks that had not been expected, he [Jensen] said. So without any delays and with the passage of one local and two state bonds, Jensen speculated doors at the Palmdale site would open either in fall 2022 or spring 2023." Putting the address of this new site into the calema web site above brings up faults on the property and liquefaction zones. Here we go again! May I suggest that the future Palmdale AVCC Campus be built on land that is not in a seismic hazard zone? Why has "faulty" land been chosen two times in a row? We are asking for more health and safety problems as well as expansion limitations, not to mention higher construction costs and delays as seismic concerns plague us. Should I be elected to the Board, I will try to convince the Board to be more prudent in site selection. Let's not make the same mistake a third time. This is one example where my presence on the board will encourage decisions that are prudent and best for the community. |
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