PD Editorial: Supporting incumbents at SRJC

For many Sonoma County residents, it takes an election every four or eight years to remember, or to realize, that Santa Rosa Junior College is overseen by a board of trustees directly elected by the public.

The eight trustees each represent a particular district and work with President Frank Chong in overseeing a 96-year-old institution that handles roughly 35,000 students a semester, has an annual budget of more than $130 million and is repeatedly recognized as one of the best two-year colleges in the United States.

This year, three of the board incumbents, Bob Burdo, Kathleen Doyle and Don Zumwalt, face rare challenges in their respective districts. The challengers, particularly Dorothy Battenfeld and Maggie Fishman, offer impressive education credentials.

But ultimately they fail to present a persuasive argument for why they would do a better job of overseeing the college than the incumbents.

Don Zumwalt, a retired car dealer who has represented the Santa Rosa area for nearly 20 years, is being challenged by Battenfeld, a respected teacher, two-time Fulbright scholar and a founder of Montgomery High School’s International Baccalaureate program in 1995.

In the Petaluma-area district, Fishman, a retired school teacher from Penngrove, is trying to unseat Kathleen Doyle, who was first elected to the Board of Trustees in 1994, left for a period of time and was reappointed to fill the seat earlier this year after moving back to Sonoma County. Fishman is a graduate of Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University with strong ideas about how to grow enrollment particularly at the SRJC Petaluma campus.

And Sebastopol apple grower Bob Burdo, who has represented the Analy district for 29 years, is being challenged by Jordan Burns, 30, who served as a student trustee on the board in 2008 and 2009 and is now overseeing a small nonprofit foundation that he founded.

So why is there such interest in the SRJC board now when, in previous years, there have been so few challengers?

There’s primarily one reason - Measure H, a $410 bond measure that appears on the same Nov. 4 ballot as the trustees. The bond would provide much-needed facility upgrades for the aging campus, upgrades that weren’t addressed in a bond act approved by the voters in 2002. The measure also would mean increased responsibility and influence by board members on how that money would be spent.

It’s clear, for example, that one of the prime interests of the labor groups supporting the challengers is to see SRJC adopt project labor agreements on bond projects. Such agreements are controversial as they place union rules and benefit mandates on campus construction projects, often to the disadvantage of non-union contractors.

Opponents argue that they can drive up the cost of construction projects, while proponents contend that they enhance accountability and ensure quality. Nonetheless, the SRJC board rightly rejected project labor agreements when the last bond measure was approved in 2002, and we have yet to hear a good argument for why they should be applied this time around, particularly given that PLAs are not in the language of the measure now before voters.

Given their backgrounds in business and finance, Burdo and Doyle, a retired certified public accountant, have provided vital financial oversight for the board for years. Meanwhile, Zumwalt’s experience on the board’s facilities committee will be indispensable if and when voters give the board the green light to move ahead with these bond projects. They all deserve to be re-elected.

The SRJC board should be allowed to focus on the mundane, nuts-and-bolts details of running a community college and meeting the needs of students. It should not be allowed to become politicized and used by special interests.

For the SRJC Board of Trustees, The Press Democrat recommends the re-election of Bob Burdo, Kathleen Doyle and Don Zumwalt.