Richard David Boyle, a Board of Trustee candidate for the San Bernardino County Community College District, spoke with a Grand Jury spokeswoman about reopening an invesigation into waste in college spending, including $332,000 budgeted for an outside consultant.
“Unless Democrats and Republicans get together to pass a budget,” Boyle said, “by December the college district will be forced to close its doors, and that would be a disaster similar to the Titantic hitting an iceberg.”
This dire warning was confirmed by Interim Chancellor Bruce Baron who told the press that the district has to borrow money from the County just to survie, costing $15,000 a month in interest, the same cost as five classes a month. Boyle has discussed this looming disaster with Baron, and both agree it is the financial worst crisis in recent history.
Boyle told Melonee Vartanian, Grand Jury assistant, that he will file his report within the next few weeks. Boyle issued the same warning last year to the Grand Jury about how the district wasted money, including $2 million spent on outside consultants, another million on travel and outside attorneys, while classes were being shut down and teachers laid off. Crafton Hills College is now on probation, and hired Matthew Lee as a consultant to try to save it from losing accreditation next year. “That money would have been better spent re-hiring fired teachers such as deaf sign language teacher Mark Chavoushi,” Boyle told the Grand Jury, “than throwing money away on some part time consultant sitting at home in front of a computer.” Boyle compared that waste to the situation in Bell, where administrators are facing long prison terms for wasting taxpayer money.
In testimony before the Grand Jury last year, Boyle blamed the present board of trustees headed by President James Ramos, who is also tribal chair of the San Manuel Casino and Band of Mission Indians, which spent over $2,300.000 in 2007 on political donations to candidates and committees all over California.
“Most of it went to Republicans,” Boyle testified before the Grand Jury, “but they also bankrolled Democrat Attorney General Jerry Brown and District Attorney Mike Ramos, who both refused to follow up on charges brought by Federal Drug Enforcement Agency of money laundering, murder plots and drug dealing for the le eme, or Mexican Mafia.”
Boyle also told the Grand Jury that DA Ramos had the case of murder of James Seay, killed after he sued a gunman connected with the casino, but refused to prosecute despite overwhemling evidence. A homicide detective with the San Bernardino Police Department told Boyle that the case of the murder of Seay, brother of football great Mark Seay, is “still open.”
Boyle said he plans to raise the issue of waste in spending and the crisis of the college system possibly shutting down in a debate at San Bernardino Valley Community College on Oct. 6, 2010, at 11 a.m. Boyle said he has spoken with leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties in the state legislature, but as of now there seems to be no end in sight to the budget deadlock.
Boyle also addressed the Board of Trustees meeting, calling for an agreement for the state legislators and governor to stop “bickering over partisan issues,” and put “students first.” Boyle also disscussed these issues in a Forest Falls town hall meeting recently with Supervisor Neil Derry, who also testified before the Grand Jury last year.
Richard David Boyle’s website is www.teachersforachange.biz and can be reached at boylewriter@aol.com