Publications

Summer 2003 Newsletter

Speaker Emeritus Hertzberg Brings Record $25 Billion School Bond To The People

This November, Californians approved a $13 billion school construction bond. Championing the legislation to put the bond on the ballot was Speaker Emeritus Robert Hertzberg. NSBN is pleased to present this interview with former Assembly Speaker Hertzberg in which he discusses the opportunity at hand for the state, the incentives built into the legislation to promote joint-use facilities through collaboration across agencies, and why this effort has the potential to succeed where others have not.

Bob, why did you choose to champion AB 16, the recent $25 billion state school bond?

I was very involved in the $9.2 billion school bond that was on the 1998 ballot. A cornerstone of those discussions was the issue of school construction and how reform had been bottle-necked in the Legislature for more than 16 years. AB 16 continues that discussion and provides a mechanism for addressing that bottleneck by incentivizing creative and innovative ways of building school facilities.

You talk about AB 16 as a way to address the problems imbedded in the school facility construction framework. How will that measure and other subsequent legislation remove those barriers to build better schools and be true catalysts for neighborhood revitalization?

Fighting the status quo-particularly in the more populated urban areas of California-is always difficult. People simply find it much easier to write next year's check to the same people they wrote it to last year. That why the "Leave it to Beaver" approach of school construction has stuck around for so long.

But what this new school bond framework allows is an opportunity to break from that tradition and truly infuse a new and vibrant dynamic into our communities. By allowing and incentivizing school districts to utilize library, park and school bond monies we begin to unlock the gates that close our school campuses at 3 o'clock and begin to make our schools the center of neighborhoods. This will truly invigorate our communities in ways that should have happened long ago.

The argument over the years has been that each bond measure-school, park and library-has its own silo-like rules, regulations, benchmarks and approval processes that create almost insurmountable disincentives to collaborate with other agencies and the community. What is in these bills, in bond measures and in the subsequent bills, to try to incentivize or make it easier for this collaboration to happen?

The next school bond specifically allocates $100 million-$50 million in November 2002 and $50 million in March 2004-toward joint-use projects. To complement that funding we've established a number of processes to help build on best practices and foster a more collaborative environment.

Bob, how do you ensure that the money in this bond measure is used for its purpose?

We've established an advisory body through the State Allocation Board, which consists of a number of groups with experience and expertise in school construction and joint-use.

That body will report back to the Legislature annually with a list of statutes and regulations that the Board recommends should be eligible for waiver in an attempt to facilitate a collaborative community planning process.

Bob, the other crises and challenges that California faces-going from 33 million people to 45 million in the next 20 years-are housing, access to health care and access to open space. You've dealt with all these efforts to provide the resources and incentives for planning. What's your sense of how local jurisdictions manage this growth?

The aforementioned legislation is laying the foundation for collaboration. And, with the recently passed school and housing bonds and the recently passed park bond, we have a tremendous amount of resources at our disposal to address the extraordinary growth predicted for California. Add to that equation the incentivization of joint-use facilities and we have an enormous new tool to implement this vision.

You must hear from local officials, school superintendents, mayors and neighborhood organizations about how difficult it is to find sites for new schools, parks, libraries, let alone new housing. How to do your respond? What about the recently approved bond measures offers hope?

It's not simple. But the reality is that with the resources the voters have approved, the money is now available. We're beginning to embrace joint use; jurisdictional collaboration difficulties have been recognized and a system is being put in place that will continue to recommend to the Legislature what statutory and regulatory changes need to be made if there continue to be roadblocks put in the way of collaboration. In essence, we've set the structure and mechanisms in place to be able to move forward and to get past these roadblocks.