COMMUNITY COLLEGES LOOK TO PROP. A FOR REPAIRS.

Byline: Erik N. Nelson

THE paint peels in classrooms, the asphalt buckles on parking lots and some Los Angeles Community College District students must go off campus to attend class because there's so little space at the district's nine campuses.

That's why officials of the district, which includes the San Fernando Valley's Mission, Pierce and Valley colleges, hope that voters citywide will pass the $1.2 billion Proposition A bond measure on the April 10 ballot.

They say campuses need repairs badly, but don't receive enough state funding to make the necessary fixes.

``We lease spaces for our physical education. We lease facilities for our studio art,'' lamented Adriana Barrera, president of Mission College. ``I wish I could say that they're nice facilities, but they're not.''

If the bond is approved, each college would receive funds for more than a dozen projects each. Mission would get $111 million for projects that include a new child development center and a fine arts complex; Pierce would get $166 million for projects that include a new science/agriculture/nursing building and a renovated library; and Valley would get $165 million for projects that include a new health sciences building and a community business park to offer job training programs.

While agreeing that the colleges need some repair, taxpayer advocates say the measure is excessive and penalizes property owners with an average $30-a-year charge just because the colleges' traditional benefactors in Sacramento won't pay for the upgraded campuses.

``Just because the state, which is flush with cash, can't get its act together should not be a reason to penalize local property taxpayers,'' said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and author of the ballot statement opposing the bond measure.

District officials stress that the expenditures will be closely monitored by a citizen oversight committee - appointed by the Board of Trustees - with members from individual oversight committees assigned to each campus.

While most of the district's community colleges were funded with local property taxes in the 1960s, when the district was part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, funding has now shifted to the state Legislature, which tends to spend its money on building new community colleges in suburban areas like the Antelope Valley, said Georgia Mercer, president of the district's board of trustees.

``We're just not on the radar screen when it comes to funding,'' Mercer said.

The measure needs only a 55 percent majority because voters approved Proposition 39 last November, reducing the two-thirds majority requirement for passage of educational bond issues.