There have been a ridiculous number of unfinished and poorly planned buildings for college campuses in the Los Angeles Community College District for the past 10 years

Whole projects being abandoned and even more of taxpayers’ money is going toward the projects like these today. 

Over billions of dollars have been wasted from the series of bond measures, which raised $5.7 billion throughout the decade to rebuild all of the nine L.A. community colleges.

Although the LACCD is the largest community college district in the U.S. and one of the biggest in the world, this problem just adds on to the deficit that California already has.

With what is going on in the economy, a bond measure that was passed 10 years ago should have finished tax its plans by 2007.

Now the students who weren’t old enough to see a PG-13 movie when the measure was passed, now have to not only pay, but suffer the distraction that any construction project causes.

Fingers of blame can be pointed in many directions from the school officials to the contractors and finally to the district’s board of trustees, but what started this project was the poor condition that the colleges were in by the end of the 1990’s.

In reaction the board placed a $1.2 billion bond measure in 2001, which was followed $1 billion bond in 2003 that were both passed by voters.

The board promised voters strict oversight of the money and for years they had gone with almost no public scrutiny because of it.

In 2007, worries of the previous bonds running out before the projects were finished, led the board to go to voters once again.

This time a $3.5 billion proposal, in which contractors helped raise $1.9 million for the ballot campaign was put out.

Fast-forward to 2011 and we can see that not much has changed in the LACCD and its sorrounding districts as well.

Many community colleges in the area such as Cerritos College still are undergoing construction and will remain under construction for a while.

The only thing the average student can do now, is question the plan that were made and keep a closer eye on those in charge of the projects that are in process.

Although this may be a case in lack of planning, someone in this equation of school construction has to be reaping benefits from the delays and redesigning of buildings.

There can be many injustices going on in the system and we cannot fix them if we don’t open our eyes and look for ourselves.