M.J. Gravina/Sun Post

A BAD IDEA?: A planned Delta College Mountain House campus, just off Interstate 205, has met with a series of delays and skyrocketing costs since its kick-off in 2005. Newly uncovered documents show a consultant that same year told the college to scrap the site for one in Tracy, but a trustee said the report was hidden from the board.

As costs and delays continue to mount for San Joaquin Delta College’s planned campus in Mountain

House, newly uncovered documents show that a consultant told college administrators years ago to drop the project and build a campus in Tracy instead.

The consultant’s report never made it to the college’s board of trustees, leading some to accuse administrators of burying information that made the Mountain House project look bad.

The college in 2005 asked real estate consultants Public Private Ventures to compare Delta’s plan for a Mountain House campus with a competing offer from the City of Tracy to build on donated land at the east end of the city.

The series of reports, for which the college paid more than $30,000, clearly stated that Tracy’s offer was superior to the Mountain House plan, which involved a partnership with real estate developer Gerry Kamilos.

PPV claimed the Mountain House project would get bogged down in contract disputes and litigation. It advised the board to look into “exit strategies” to get out of their agreement with Kamilos, and accept the offer to build in Tracy instead.

But none of these reports were passed on to trustees, who were then in a heated dispute about whether to give up on the project in Mountain House over problems with Kamilos.

Trustee Ted Simas, who represents Manteca and Escalon, said he first saw the payment to PPV in a budget report last June and asked President Raul Rodriguez what it was for.

“I was upset to (learn about the report) in 2007, mainly because if we got that back in late ‘05 or early 2006, we might have a permanent building up (in Tracy) by now,” said Simas, who has long opposed the Mountain House project.     

“But instead somebody, or somebodies, chose not to let the board see that.”

Rodriguez denied that the reports were hidden. He claimed the board committed to Mountain House before the consultant was finished, so the report was abandoned.

“It became a moot point,” Rodriguez said
this week.

But PPV’s last report was dated Oct. 10, 2005, eight days before the board voted 5-2 to further investigate Tracy's offer, according to meeting minutes.

Rodriguez admitted PPV never presented a report to the board, but claimed the reports’ author, Jim Goodell, discussed the Tracy deal in a closed-session meeting.

Rodriguez said he did not know the exact date this happened, and was unable to find out by press time.

Simas said he did not remember Goodell appearing before the board.

Many of the PPV’s predictions about the Mountain House deal have turned out to be accurate.

The project was repeatedly put off in 2006 and 2007 while the college struggled with Kamilos over who was responsible for fees on the new campus.

Since then, costs have risen far beyond the board’s initial predictions, taking money away from other projects in the county.

The college now hopes to start classes in Mountain House in January 2009, but will be forced to use temporary modular buildings while the permanent campus is completed.

No one at PPV, which is based in Pasadena, was available to comment on the studies.

Trustee Greg McCreary, who represents Tracy and also opposes to the Mountain House plan, said he was not surprised to learn last year about the two-year-old reports.

“I’m neither angry nor surprised because that’s been the modus operandi,” McCreary said.

“Somebody told somebody not to bring that forward. Otherwise, a consultant certainly on their own would not decide not to show a report that they worked on.”

Other trustees did not respond to calls from the Sun Post.