title https://www.pacbiztimes.com Proudly serving Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties Fri, 22 Mar 2024 22:46:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 UC Santa Barbara, Goleta reach settlement agreement on student housing https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2024/03/22/uc-santa-barbara-goleta-reach-settlement-agreement-on-student-housing/ Fri, 22 Mar 2024 22:46:23 +0000 https://www.pacbiztimes.com/?p=92632 Goleta and the UC Regents have reached a settlement on the 2021 lawsuit in which the city alleged UC Santa Barbara was not building student and faculty housing as provided for in the university’s 2010 long range development plan. Announced March 22, the city alleged that the lack of long range housing plans negatively impacted Read More →

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Goleta and the UC Regents have reached a settlement on the 2021 lawsuit in which the city alleged UC Santa Barbara was not building student and faculty housing as provided for in the university’s 2010 long range development plan.

Announced March 22, the city alleged that the lack of long range housing plans negatively impacted Goleta and its residents.

The new settlement agreement, which was approved by a majority of the Goleta City Council, includes UCSB committing to constructing an additional 3,500 student beds by Sept. 1, 2029, and will pursue the housing projects originally outlined in the 2010 LRDP.

UCSB will build housing at the facilities management site on the northwestern corner of the main campus and at the East Campus Infill and Redevelopment site, according to a press release.

“Affordable housing is the most vexing challenge facing our County. This Agreement acknowledges that UCSB’s struggles in meeting the needs of its campus community have had a cascading impact on us all.  We have forged a new chapter in actually delivering university housing and addressing impacts in Isla Vista — the home of one of the largest mass evictions in our history,” Second District Supervisor Laura Capps, whose district includes the community of Isla Vista neighboring the UCSB Campus, said in a press release.  

Moreover, the university will make a one-time payment of $2.3 million to the City of Goleta to support capital projects intended to serve the broader Goleta and campus communities.

UCSB also agreed to pay the city of Goleta $500 per student over the cap, based on a three-quarter average, in the event on-campus enrollment exceeds the cap, unless the increase is mandated by the California Legislature. 

In exchange, Goleta has agreed to waive housing and enrollment-related claims that it raised under the 2010 agreement and has agreed to dismiss their pending lawsuit with prejudice.

“The university is proud of its more than $2 billion direct and indirect annual contributions to the local economy.  Additional investments in capital projects that benefit our neighbors in Goleta and Santa Barbara County as well as our students, staff, and faculty are a better use of resources than legal costs,” Chuck Haines, UC Santa Barbara’s vice chancellor and chief financial officer, said in a press release.

“We have enjoyed a long and mutually beneficial relationship with the City of Goleta and with the County of Santa Barbara, including our direct contributions of more than $2 million a year in support of the Isla Vista community. We look forward to completing construction on our new on-campus student housing projects and working closely with the City and County on ways to support our local community.”  

email: jmercado@pacbiztimes.com

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Tri-county colleges expand degree programs  https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2024/03/21/tri-county-colleges-expand-degree-programs/ Thu, 21 Mar 2024 20:04:13 +0000 https://www.pacbiztimes.com/?p=92622 This article is only available to Business Times subscribers Subscribers: LOG IN or REGISTER for complete digital access. Not a Subscriber? SUBSCRIBE for full access to our weekly newspaper, online edition and Book of Lists. Check the STATUS of your Subscription Account.

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Forum focuses on needed affordable housing for area educators  https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2024/03/07/forum-focuses-on-needed-affordable-housing-for-area-educators/ Fri, 08 Mar 2024 00:17:29 +0000 https://www.pacbiztimes.com/?p=92559 Many students at California’s public colleges and universities have to sleep in their cars because they can’t afford permanent housing, including dormitories. Among them are those enrolled at CSU Channel Islands, according to Linda Braunschweiger, CEO of the Housing Trust Fund Ventura County. “There’s a large percentage of them,” she told the Business Times on Read More →

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Many students at California’s public colleges and universities have to sleep in their cars because they can’t afford permanent housing, including dormitories.

Among them are those enrolled at CSU Channel Islands, according to Linda Braunschweiger, CEO of the Housing Trust Fund Ventura County.

“There’s a large percentage of them,” she told the Business Times on March 5, a few days after her nonprofit co-hosted a symposium at the school.

The Feb. 29 forum addressed the need for more affordable housing for students, teachers, administrators, and related education sector employees in Ventura County — the least affordable housing market in the nation.

The “Home for Education” event gathered community leaders to focus specifically on the challenges of how to convert excess land that is owned by school districts in the county into affordable housing.

“The purpose is to bring together the development community and the education community to sit down and start talking about how to meet those challenges,” Braunschweiger, who is also the CEO of the Housing Land Trust Ventura County, said during a break at the event.

Braunschweiger said the two primary hurdles are the costs of developing affordable housing projects and finding long-term financing for them.

School districts in Ventura County that own excess land that can be developed into affordable housing include the Ojai Unified School District, which is entertaining just such a project, the Ventura Unified School District, and the Pleasant Valley School District, she said.

Housing Trust Fund Ventura County was launched in 2011 to help increase affordable housing options throughout the county by leveraging public-private partnerships to provide low-cost, flexible loans in the pre-development stage.

Co-hosting the symposium with the trust fund were CSUCI, Ventura County, the Ventura County Office of Education, and the Ventura County P-20 Council.

The forum highlighted the trust fund’s accomplishments, including $27.5 million in funded or committed loans since 2013 and $40 million raised.

That has resulted in 1,177 affordable apartments and homes committed, funded, and produced throughout Ventura County for very-low, low- and middle-income employees, transitional-age foster youth, veterans, farm workers, and the homeless.

One of the symposium’s keynote speakers, Al Grazioli, director of real estate and business development for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said affordable housing has several benefits for school districts.

It can attract and retain qualified teachers and staff, make districts become employers of choice, and allow employees to live in and become a part of the communities they serve.

“We needed housing yesterday,” he said.

The other keynote speaker, Abraham Galvan Sanchez, an attorney with Best Best & Krieger, agreed.

“There is a dire need for teacher housing,” Galvan Sanchez, who specializes in land use and housing laws, said.

A step in the right direction, he noted, was Assembly Bill 2295, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in 2022, adding a new section to the state’s Government Code.

The section considers housing development projects on property owned by a local educational agent to be an allowable use of the property, provided certain criteria are met.

Braunschweiger said she would like to see the Ventura County business community step up and invest more to help solve the region’s affordable housing problem.

“If you look up in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley and all that area, huge corporate headquarters commit and donate millions of dollars towards solving the housing crisis up there,” she said.

“I’d like to see the business community in Ventura County and bigger corporations do the same thing,” Braunschweiger said. “They can be a player in solving the problem.”

And in so doing, they can help themselves by creating more affordable workforce housing, she said.

The scarcity of such housing frequently makes it hard for employers to fill positions since many qualified candidates can’t afford to live in Ventura County.

The symposium concluded with tours of two housing developments adjacent to the CSUCI campus – University Glen and the under-construction Anacapa Canyon. 

Both developments were built on educational properties owned by CSUCI and will be home to nearly 2,000 residents including university employees, educational allies, alumni, seniors, and the public. 

“These developments remind us that discussions like today have the potential of becoming homes tomorrow,” Braunschweiger said in a press release.

“Today we took an important step towards ensuring more homes for all as a community,” she said.

email: mharris@pacbiztimes.com

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UCSB unveils new housing plans for 2027 https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2024/02/19/ucsb-unveils-new-housing-plans-for-2027/ Mon, 19 Feb 2024 19:01:10 +0000 https://www.pacbiztimes.com/?p=92436 This article is only available to Business Times subscribers Subscribers: LOG IN or REGISTER for complete digital access. Not a Subscriber? SUBSCRIBE for full access to our weekly newspaper, online edition and Book of Lists. Check the STATUS of your Subscription Account.

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CLU president alludes to no-confidence vote in state of school speech https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2024/02/07/clu-president-alludes-to-no-confidence-vote-in-state-of-school-speech/ Wed, 07 Feb 2024 19:41:37 +0000 https://www.pacbiztimes.com/?p=92368 California Lutheran University President Lori Varlotta on Feb. 6 gave her first public address since a faculty no-confidence resolution in her last month. While she didn’t mention the resolution by name in her State of the University speech at the Thousand Oaks-based school, Varlotta alluded to it, citing factors she believes fueled it. “There’s never Read More →

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California Lutheran University President Lori Varlotta giving a State of the University address at the Thousand Oaks-based school Feb. 6. (Mike Harris / PCBT Staff)

California Lutheran University President Lori Varlotta on Feb. 6 gave her first public address since a faculty no-confidence resolution in her last month.

While she didn’t mention the resolution by name in her State of the University speech at the Thousand Oaks-based school, Varlotta alluded to it, citing factors she believes fueled it.

“There’s never been a harder time to be a college president,” Varlotta said, due in part to a growing number of Americans questioning the value of a higher education degree.

She also noted that like many other universities, enrollment at CLU began slipping in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, cutting into tuition revenues. 

Moreover, adaptive changes, like the ones she was hired in 2020 to implement at the school, “disrupt the status quo,” according to a PowerPoint she used in her presentation.

“Many of us who know that we need to make adaptive changes are going to hit some bumpy roads,” Varlotta said in a meeting with reporters from the Business Times and other publications following her address.

The CLU faculty passed the no-confidence resolution on a 122-3 vote on Jan. 16, petitioning Varlotta to resign or for the school’s Board of Regents to remove her.

The resolution said in part that the faculty has no confidence in Varlotta’s “ability to be an effective steward of the university budget and her ability to maintain the financial health of the institution.”

The day after, three officers of the Board of Regents, speaking on behalf of the full body, issued a statement saying Varlotta continues to have the regents’ “full support.”

On Jan. 20, Varlotta, CLU’s first female president, told the Business Times she doesn’t intend to step down.

Varlotta declined to discuss the no-confidence resolution in the meeting with reporters.

She said she only wanted to answer questions “about the exciting things and what’s next for Cal Lutheran.

“I’ve already given interviews on the resolution,” she said. “But I believe I addressed it pretty clearly” in her speech.

Varlotta said she did so “by talking about the changes that are afoot at the local and national level … and stating very clearly that we are a campus where there is a sense of change afoot that is anxiety-producing for many people.

“Change is difficult,” she added.

The faculty resolution said educators also have no confidence in Varlotta’s ability to “refrain from alienating many longstanding donors and supporters of Cal Lutheran.”

In September 2023, 17 major donors to the Elton and Janice Gallegly Center for Public Service and Civic Engagement on the university’s campus demanded reimbursement for donations made toward its development.

Elton Gallegly, a Republican Congressman from Simi Valley from 1987 to 2013, has sued the university, Varlotta and former school president Chris Kimball for breach-of-contract, alleging the school had failed to fully establish the center. 

Varlotta’s State of the University address focused in part on the adaptive changes made at the school in the past decade and the additive and adaptive changes on the horizon.

Adaptive changes made at CLU in the past ten years include merging with Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in 2014, diversifying faculty, staff, and students, and expanding the school’s curriculum to include more than 45 majors.

Future changes that must be implemented include reviewing all major fields of study to ensure that the school offers the ones that students want and the marketplace needs and focusing more heavily on adult students, according to the PowerPoint.

Despite the anxieties that “are alive and well on our campus,” Varlotta said that as president, “I must be sure that I do the best I can to keep us going and making the adaptive changes that first and foremost keep students first.”

Varlotta told reporters that the school’s financial future looks bright despite a current operation shortfall in which expenses exceed ongoing revenues. 

“We believe that’s a short-term phenomenon … that we can make better by growing our net tuition revenues,” she said.

“Deficits are not a part of our normal,” Varlotta said. “They’re not unusual for many, many tuition-driven institutions. But we’ve always enjoyed balanced budgets.”

email: mharris@pacbiztimes.com 

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CLU president, faculty, regents make for turbulent week https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2024/01/25/clu-president-faculty-regents-make-for-turbulent-week/ Fri, 26 Jan 2024 00:57:30 +0000 https://www.pacbiztimes.com/?p=92279 This article is only available to Business Times subscribers Subscribers: LOG IN or REGISTER for complete digital access. Not a Subscriber? SUBSCRIBE for full access to our weekly newspaper, online edition and Book of Lists. Check the STATUS of your Subscription Account.

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UCSB’s John Bowers takes home top award from IEEE https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2024/01/20/ucsbs-john-bowers-takes-home-top-award-from-ieee/ Sat, 20 Jan 2024 22:27:07 +0000 https://www.pacbiztimes.com/?p=92236 This article is only available to Business Times subscribers Subscribers: LOG IN or REGISTER for complete digital access. Not a Subscriber? SUBSCRIBE for full access to our weekly newspaper, online edition and Book of Lists. Check the STATUS of your Subscription Account.

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