William Stewart: Southwestern College Seat 1
I have a great deal of experience with the community college
system. I have been a professor at San Diego City College, a local the community
college, for 26 years. As a result, I am familiar with both the accreditation
process and the shared governance process as established by our state
legislature through AB 1725, both of which I believe are very important for a
governing board member. On top of
this, because I am a business owner myself, I am very experienced with
analyzing and developing sound budgets and budgeting plans
As for the most important issues facing Southwestern College,
This college has faced challenges with respect to:
1. Appropriate
management of building funds
2. Year over year,
negative operating budgets
3. Campus morale and
trust problems, due to year over year budget cuts with inadequate time
dedicated to budgetary transparency and employee information and input.
I believe that my financial background will be a great asset to
the board. I believe that the old misuse of building funds in the past could
have been prevented if there were board members that were familiar with
building and bidding processes as well as skilled at reviewing complex
financial reports. Though the old board
has been rightful voted out of office since those problems has been brought to
light, I will be able to contribute my financial expertise to help this new
board prevent any such improprieties from occurring again. I will accomplish
this if elected by guaranteeing the voter that I will pour over all financial
information provided to the board, and I will ask for detailed data whenever
the information provided is inadequate or imprecise or has apparent
discrepancies. I will offer my insights to the board for the benefit of the
college and the college community.
Having been a member of a community college for over 26 years, I
understand the idea of a community college. The community college is supposed
to be part of the larger community and as such it should contribute to that
community. We should both educate our community, provide important services to
our community and provide good jobs for that same community. The healthier we
can make our college, the greater contributions we can make to our community.
Healthy budgets are only part of the health of a college. Currently, the morale
on the college campus is not as high as it once was. I will take the time to make faculty and staff, students and
community members feel heard. The college is facing significant challenges, but
if we can take the time to listen to the community, the students, the staff and
the faculty, we stand a better chance at coming up with solutions that serves
the better interests of all. A healthy community college is like a living
creature, we cannot help the overall health of the organism by cannibalizing
other parts of that same organism. We need to work together and I will dedicate
myself to helping bring that collaborative spirit back to Southwestern College.
Best Regards,
William Stewart