Chula Vista’s long-held dream to build a four-year university on 383 acres of vacant land the city owns near its southeastern border took a small step forward last week.
The 14-member South County Higher Education Planning Task Force, recently created by state legislation, held its first meeting Friday to begin planning what city, state and local education officials hope will become a unique hybrid university offering four-year degrees to South County students.
But there’s a reason this dream has remained just a dream for so long. And Friday’s meeting left unclear whether anything has changed enough to make the dream a reality anytime soon.
City leaders and higher education advocates want a four-year university in Chula Vista to serve local and bi-national students who otherwise travel out of the area to get a four-year degree.
But no one knows how to pay for such an endeavor. And no existing university – including the California State University or University of California systems – has expressed interest in building or paying for a new campus in San Diego’s border region.
The task force is responsible for producing a report that will outline what a South County university could look like, what sorts of degrees it would offer and how the school might be funded, built and governed.
The open question is whether that report, due next year to state legislators, will, like so many other reports, sit on a shelf gathering dust. Or whether it will galvanize construction of a new university that could in turn galvanize South County’s economy and regional standing.
Lurking behind that question is a more fundamental question facing South County. The region, especially the city of Chula Vista, is seeking to move beyond its historical identity as San Diego County’s second-class stepchild.
Will it succeed? That depends in part on whether the higher education task force can persuade policymakers to make Chula Vista’s educational dream a reality.
The driving force behind the university at the moment is state Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat who says he is determined to give South County residents access to the kinds of educational opportunities that propelled him from a childhood in Barrio Logan to the halls of power in Sacramento.
Alvarez graduated from San Diego State University. He said he wants to enable South County students to obtain a four-year degree without having to leave the place they grew up.
It was Alvarez who authored legislation to create the higher education task force. On Friday, he warned task force members – including representatives from SDSU and the University of California, San Diego – that if California’s two public university systems continued to drag their feet on participating wholeheartedly in the new university, Alvarez was prepared to move on without them.
“We’re going to look for ways to maximize educational opportunities for our community,” he told task force members. “I don’t mean to be offensive, but if it’s not UC or CSU, it’s going to be a community college or a private institution or a combination.”
The city of Chula Vista recently inked a deal with SDSU to begin offering four-year nursing degrees at the soon-to-open Millenia Library.
Alvarez, along with other local higher education leaders, including Southwestern College President Mark Sanchez, have a bigger vision.
A consultant presented task force members with a proposal that features a verdant campus set within a larger urban village of housing and retail. Multiple universities would use portions of the campus to offer a flexible mix of degree programs that would change in response to labor market demands.
If that makes universities accustomed to controlling their own facilities uncomfortable, too bad, Alvarez said.
“We’re looking to serve students and have systems adapt to students, instead of students adapting to systems,” Alvarez said. “Universities are accustomed to managing their own facilities. But we might be looking at doing something different here.”
I asked SDSU Provost William Tong, a task force member, what he thought of Alvarez’s pointed remarks. Would SDSU be willing to participate in such a project?
Tong was noncommittal. He said SDSU already is partnering with Southwestern College to offer four-year degrees in South County, and soon would offer the nursing degrees at the Millenia Library.
“We’ll expand on these programs,” he said. “This [envisioned] campus will be a place where these programs have a physical home…SDSU is very popular.”
National City’s Budget Woes Echo Countywide Trends
Earlier this week, I attended a budget workshop in National City, which is sprinting to pass a budget by the end of June.
The city faces daunting math. Recent salary increases for employees, along with inflation, flattening tax revenue and rising pension and liability costs, could result in a $16 million deficit next year. That’s a lot in a city with a roughly $90 million general fund budget.
On Monday, councilmembers debated how to close the gap. I couldn’t help noticing that the debate echoed arguments taking place elsewhere in San Diego County as governments grapple with rising costs and stagnating revenues.
Similar to leaders in the city of San Diego and on the County Board of Supervisors, National City councilmembers debated whether to rein in spending, find new sources of revenue, tap city reserves – or relax because the budget situation maybe isn’t as bad as it seems.
Councilmember Jose Rodriguez, especially, seemed skeptical of dire projections.
“[City budget] projections have been wrong over the past 10 years,” he said.
Rodriguez said National City needs to break what he said is a longstanding habit of overly cautious budgeting. The city should find creative new sources of revenue and expand programs serving vulnerable residents, such as the city’s free meals program, he said.
At one point, Rodriguez grew visibly exasperated with Mayor Ron Morrison’s calls for fiscal restraint.
“I remember sitting in the [City Council chambers] audience [years ago] and hearing you saying over and over again the same thing,” Rodriguez said to Morrison. “It’s an excuse to keep [city] employees underpaid, keeping city services scarce, keeping businesses from paying their fair share. We need to get out of this scarcity mentality.”
Morrison and Councilmember Luz Molina said good intentions don’t alter mathematical reality.
Molina noted the city already has drained one of its main reserve funds by nearly half to balance this year’s budget.
“We face the possibility [the reserve fund] could drain to zero,” she said. “I’m scared.”
In Other News
- The Chula Vista City Council on Tuesday voted 4-1 to initiate an inquiry into who paid for Mayor John McCann’s recent special effects-laden State of the City speech. I wrote last week about the speech’s eye-opening extras (skydiving, opera soloist, Hollywood-style movie) and noted that McCann’s staff said sponsors paid for everything but routine costs. Councilmembers on Tuesday said the speech was mostly a political stunt and risked creating an appearance of deep-pocketed donors buying influence. McCann, a Republican, is up for re-election this year and said the speech complied with all city regulations. He voted against the inquiry. The other councilmembers are Democrats.
- Tired of all the political drama? Take a break by participating in a series of events this week celebrating the tiny insects that make the rest of life possible. The San Diego Pollinator Alliance is hosting outdoor walks (including a nighttime walk focused on bats, “the forgotten pollinators”), a milkweed farm tour, a presentation on native California bees and other family-friendly activities as part of San Diego Pollinator Week. Details here.