COMMISSION LOOKS AHEAD; BELMONT OVERSEERS DOUBT SCHOOL BOARD.

Byline: David R. Baker Staff Writer

The commissioners charged with weighing the fate of the Belmont Learning Center opened their final discussions Monday with a nagging question: Can the Los Angeles school district be trusted to keep its students safe?

Some on the commission doubted it.

With the group set to vote Wednesday on whether the project should be finished or ditched, several said Monday they had little confidence in the district to operate long-term the complex system needed to protect the downtown high school from methane and other chemicals seeping up from an oil field below.

``There's a very real question as to whether one can trust the district to maintain it,'' said Ira Reiner, the commission's executive director.

He noted that a recent report on the district's environmental branch found that employees routinely downplayed potential problems.

``Past is prologue, and it doesn't seem there's been any sea change here,'' he said.

The deliberations that began Monday will cap two months of intense work by the commission.

Group members must now decide what to do with Belmont - believed to be the nation's most expensive school - and then present that recommendation to the school board next week.

The board has final say over the troubled project.

Commission members Monday reached quick agreement on some of the more basic questions surrounding the school.

They agreed Belmont would not be safe without some system to prevent the buildup of potentially explosive methane gas. And they agreed the site, on top of an old oil field just east of the Harbor Freeway and south of the Hollywood Freeway, should never have been picked by the district.

``This site was the result of expediency, of cutting corners,'' said commission member Craig Perkins, director of environmental and public works management for the city of Santa Monica.

But on the larger question of whether the district could be counted on to operate the protective systems for the life of the school, group members split.

Perkins and Reiner expressed doubts, with Reiner warning that future district leaders may choose to skimp on maintaining an expensive system in order to find more money for books or supplies.

``What this school board will do says nothing about what future school boards will do,'' Reiner said.

Commission member Charles Calderon disagreed, saying that at some point, the group would have to trust district leaders to keep their promises.

``If we can't rely on them to do their job here, then how many other jobs or functions can't we rely on them for?'' said Calderon, a former state senator.