Your Oct. 29 article “Measures and propositions on the Nov. 6 ballot” may have inadvertently given a misleading impression of the potential impact of Measure Q.
In 2002, the taxpayers of Solano County funded a $124.5 million bond measure (Measure G) to improve the facilities at Solano Community College. Of that amount, $5 million was used to remodel the science/engineering building. The remodeling was just completed during the summer of 2011.
Now the district has spent $300,000 to float a new bond measure (Measure Q) in the November 2012 election, asking the taxpayers of Solano and Yolo Counties for an additional $348 million.
Part of the money from Measure Q will be used to gut or entirely demolish the newly remodeled science/engineering building and build a new one. In addition, $1 million from Measure G was spent on building a new soccer field. If Measure Q passes, the soccer field is to be demolished and replaced with a pond.
Meanwhile, 14 programs, including engineering, remain under threat of program discontinuance at Solano Community College. After the campus and community spoke out to support these threatened programs last year, the program discontinuance process was “put on hold,” but was not cancelled.
What the students of Solano Community College urgently need is a commitment from the administration that their educational programs will remain intact and that their classes will be offered. However, Measure Q provides no funds whatsoever for keeping these and other academic programs alive.
If Measure Q passes and statewide Proposition 30 (which would provide funds to pay teachers and other staff) is defeated, students at SCC may find themselves with an unnecessary new science/engineering building, but with no classes being taught due to program closures, class cancellations and layoffs.
Dr. Melanie Lutz
Engineering and Physics Departments
Solano Community College
Fairfield
