REMARKS MADE RELATING TO THE
GROSSMONT-CUYAMACA COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT
BOND PROPOSAL

Trustee Wendell Cutting
July 16, 2002

This bond proposal can be summed up in just two words: Common Sense. This is a common sense bond, based totally on the needs of our current and future students and the economic viability of East County. It is based on facts.

Grossmont College was built years ago to accommodate less than 5,000 students. Today it is bursting at the seams with 18,000 students – and its student population will continue to grow. We’re looking at 20,000 students in just a few short years. Cuyamaca College was built for 3,500 students. Today, it too is bursting at the seams with over 8,000 students; and it has one of the highest percentage growth rates of any community college in California.

After 40 years of constant use, our facilities to accommodate students desperately need repairs and upgrades. We also need to construct new facilities to take care of growth. The efforts made to keep our buildings functioning has been masterful to say the least. The people who have maintained them and have tried to keep them functioning ought to get some sort of a Nobel Prize. But today it is “crunch time.” We are shortly going to be in “crisis time.”

Our mission is to prepare students for transfer to 4 year colleges and universities, and to prepare students for jobs and career advancement. How can our students be expected to be prepared to meet the technology needs of this century when technology labs are outdated? How can we expect them to compete with other students, in the future, in 4 year institutions, and in the marketplace, without adequate facilities and laboratories? Our students now compete magnificently with students from other institutions, but I am concerned about the future. Our science and language labs should not look like or have the same facilities that I utilized going through school many, many years ago. Our classrooms were not designed for computer workstations and the electrical power system can barely support current technology.

For many of our students, with our open door policy (which we must maintain), our District is the only way “up and out.” It is their only way to a better way of life. We cannot allow our most valuable, our most precious commodity, the students of East County, to not be viable in the universities and the marketplaces of the United States and the world. We owe them no less.

Our District is the jewel of East County. One thing that is often overlooked is what this District contributes to the economy of East County. Using the standard, basic formula of economic stimulators, as presented by CC Benefits, Inc., an extremely well regarded company that does economic benefit analyses for community college districts; our economic impact on East County is some $426,400,000 annually. Let me repeat that: our economic impact on East County is over $426 million dollars annually. This economic spin-off affects every business owner and every family in East County. It helps provide the goods and services we in East County have come to expect. It just makes good business sense to support this bond measure.

This measure is about students. This measure is about our future. This measure is about the future of East County. It is only common sense to support what is right – and that is this bond measure before us tonight.