BELMONT FINAL REPORT MUDDLED.

Byline: Greg Gittrich Staff Writer

Delivering an ambiguous and muddled message, the citizens advisory commission weighing the fate of the Belmont Learning Center handed over its final report Tuesday on the $282 million school construction project to the Los Angeles school board.

The presentation came 27 days after the commission voted 4-3 to recommend completing the nation's costliest high school despite environmental problems. After a 60-day review of Belmont, the commissioners culled arrived at sharply different interpretations of the same evidence.

In a letter attached to each copy of the report, former District Attorney Ira Reiner, the commission's executive director and chief counsel, ridiculed the majority view. Reiner, who could not vote in his advisory role, called it ``profoundly wrong.''

``The possibility of a catastrophic event at the Belmont site, sometime during the next 50-75 years, is not a figment of anyone's imagination,'' Reiner told the school board.

The school board did not comment on the commission's findings. Nevertheless, a majority of board members indicated they lean toward abandoning the school. The board has not set a firm date for its final decision.

The vote, originally scheduled for this week, has been pushed back to allow the board to read the report, district staff to prepare an analysis and the public to address the board. The board might vote by mid-December.

The commission's majority concluded that Belmont, which sits partially built atop an oil field seeping potentially explosive and deadly gases, should be completed and can be made safe with a $60.5 million system of vents, vacuums, liners and blowers.

The majority listed seven conditions to ensure the site's safety. The stipulations include the majority's concern that state law may prohibit building a school on an oil field with known contamination.

Following their Oct. 20 vote to proceed with construction, the commissioners pledged to hand over a report to the board within five days. Disagreements between the divided panel forced at least seven re-writes.

Commissioner Charles Calderon, who voted with the majority, dismissed Reiner's warnings as ``political antics.''

Calderon, a former state senator, said he would ``not hesitate for one second'' to send his children to Belmont. Commissioner Janett Humphries, president of the Service Employees International Union, made a similar pledge.

The minority faction found the 35-acre site, located downtown at the intersection of Temple Street and Beaudry Avenue, is not suitable for use as a school. They maintain there is no evidence to demonstrate the enormous complex can be made safe from health and safety risks.

Commissioner David Beckman, who wrote the minority argument in the report, charged the majority made unauthorized changes to the report after the commission voted on the contents last week. Most notably, many quotes from experts who testified in front of the commission are incomplete or taken out of context, Beckman said.