With the economic downturn and the resulting California budget crunch, SJECCD finds itself in a high-stakes poker game with other educational institutions around the state, fighting it out for available state educational funds.

By appearances, SJECCD looks out matched.

Surrounded by experienced poker players such as the University of California system and the K-12 lobby, the chance of raking a pot looks slim.

But SJECCD has some cards up its sleeve. Matter of fact it has four aces.

Should the district use one of those aces to win an occasional pot to remain in the game as long as possible, or does it wait for the monster pot and use all the aces for an unbeatable hand?

The cards hidden up its sleeve is the amount of unused land on the EVC campus that the district controls.

While many educational institutions were built in heavy urban areas and find themselves surrounded by businesses, residential developments or roads, EVC was built in what used to be called the boonies, and has land, lots of land.

But how to best utilize this land to get the most out of it, and do you use all the excess land now, or hold some in reserve in case another budget crunch comes sometime down the road?

The school board will be looking at these issues over the coming year, hoping to find a way to get maximum return with giving up minimal land.

At the school board meeting on Sept. 24, the chancellor’s office was directed by the board to develop a master plan for the land usage.

The board last year approved the investigation of the sale of a 10-acre plot on Yerba Buena Rd, directly behind the Evergreen Shopping Center at the corner of Yerba Buena and San Felipe.

The chancellor’s office, during the investigation, was told that the property along San Felipe, where the district office is now located, would be much more valuable to a company such as Safeway than the property on Yerba Buena.

The chancellor’s office proposed as part of a possible master plan that the board consider moving its offices to another piece of land on the campus, freeing up the valuable land for leasing to business.

Vice chancellor Mike Hill came to the board meeting with representatives from Barry Swenson Developers, armed with a proposal for a master plan.

They divided the land that could be used into four quadrants:

Parcel No. 1 is the 10-acre plot behind the Evergreen Shopping Center that is currently an empty lot. The proposal has this parcel used for a three-story building, with one floor dedicated to the new district office. It would also include high-density, low-cost housing. The housing could be apartments, could be college dormitories.

Parcel No. 2 is the land where the district office sits, on San Felipe Road, just west of the shopping center. This is the land that would be leased to a business such as Safeway.

Parcel No. 3 is the large vacant lot between the justice training center and the west college parking lot. Parcel No. 3 would be used for less dense housing, such as town-houses, with some possibly used for low-cost housing for students or faculty.

Parcel No. 4 is on Montgomery Hill, west of where the observatory is being built. This final piece of land could be used for single-family homes, again with some low-cost options for faculty that the district could use to recruit and maintain talented faculty.

Hill stressed that this proposal was just one of many potential options and was only used to demonstrate to the board the potential to use the land to best meet the college needs.

The board stressed that they would like to see more college related land usage, specifically dorms or low-cost student housing.

Any planning could be thwarted by the City of San José. San José’s current priority is traffic concerns. They may nix any zoning changes to all these vacant lots because adding any housing or businesses would add to the area’s traffic woes.

The chancellor’s office has had preliminary talks with the city, and it does appear to be favorable to some change, but may back down when they see the elaborate new master plan for land use.

In other district business, the board failed to approve additional budget additions from the state growth fund (see last issue of The Flyer.)

With only four out of seven board members present, the vote was three to one in favor of adding funds. With a majority of four trustees needs to pass, the motion died and the budget increase will only be $300,000 per school.

Trustees Maria Fuentes, Richard Hobbs and Dawn Wright approved the motion to double the increase, while trustee Rosalinda Rodriguez voted to reject the increase. Trustees Ronald Lind, Richard Tanaka and Nancy Pyle were absent for the vote.