Since our earlier posts outlined what went on in the sessions on the hotel and teaching center, much of the agenda has been described.  However, the Committee on Compliance and Audit discussed a variety of issues related to the child abuse scandal at Penn State with the theme of whether such events could occur at UC.  There were also reports on tech initiatives including common payroll and personnel systems across the campuses.  There was also discussion of the outfall in terms of safety issues that resulted from an agreement between the DA of Los Angeles and the Regents arising out of a case in which a student lab assistant died in a fire at UCLA.  As noted on other prior posts on this blog, a UCLA faculty member is still being prosecuted by the DA despite the deal with the Regents.

Part 1 of the meeting (which runs up until Building and Grounds) can be heard at the link below: [Public testimony on the UCLA hotel comes at the start of this part]

Part 2 of the meeting (Building and Grounds) can be heard at:

After the Regents Building and Grounds Committee rubber stamped the hotel (except for bathrooms and loading docks!), it went on to consider a proposal for a new Teaching and Learning Center for the Health Sciences.  The presentation was by Steve Olsen and Dean Eugene Washington of the Med School.  In this case, we came close to a repeat of the March Regents meeting on the UCLA hotel (which the Regents at that time refused to endorse).  Part of the Regents’ complaint back in March was that apart with defects in the hotel, they were more generally being presented with a fait accompli with yes or no decisions.  They wanted options early in the process and not just on the hotel but for other projects in the future.

In the case of the medical teaching center, the Regents had problems with both the plan – vague though it was – and the lack of real alternative options.  The teaching center was said to cost in the neighborhood of $120 million.  Unlike the hotel, however, the sum was to be raised by grants, not projected revenue streams so at least there was no flaky business plan.  It was said that the teaching center was needed to ensure accreditation of UCLA’s med school.  An earlier accreditation review was said to have complained that teaching was taking place in scattered buildings.  But let’s put aside the implausibility of UCLA’s med school losing its accreditation because of teaching in multiple buildings and move on – since no one on the Regents committee questioned that notion.  None of them must have read in the proposal the following description of the med school which would appear to suggest that un-accrediting of the School was, well, unlikely:

Anyway, the new facility is proposed to be located on the corner of Tiverton and LeConte, just west of the botanical garden.  UCLA was requesting approval of $3.96 million to develop more detailed plans.  You can find the proposal at:

The facility would contain 120,000 gross square feet but only 68,500 square feet would be usable.  That gap caught the eye of various Regents.  First, it seemed awfully specific for a project which as yet is represented as not having even conceptual architectural plans.  Second, it seemed inefficient to lose that much space in a plan.  Third, when you divide the usable square feet by the projected cost, you get a cost per square foot which, as one Regent pointed out, was well beyond the cost of Class A space in Manhattan.

So what to do?  The committee was facing the possibility of doing what they did in March and not endorsing the planning money.  Various Regents said they wanted to see alternative plans including options for physical downsizing (smaller facility) and lower costs before allocating funds.  They wanted the option of simply buying a commercial building to be considered.  They didn’t take seriously the official proposal’s statement that three alternatives were already considered:

In the end, however, the Regents went ahead on the word of Patrick Lenz, VP for Budget and Capital Projects of UCOP, that true alternatives would be prepared by UCLA for the November meeting.

As with the hotel, the larger problem is not any specific project but the fact that the Regents approve vast sums for construction without any real ability to follow up or even independently ascertain what alternatives there might be or whether the projects live up to the promises made once constructed.

You can hear this segment of the Regents Sept. 11 meeting at the links below: