Get ready to vote for Pima Community College board

Three candidates are vying for the District 5 seat on the Governing Board of Pima Community College, which has been under accreditation sanctions since 2013 due to problems meeting quality standards.

The main point on which the candidates differ is whether the college is in good hands under the leadership of Chancellor Lee Lambert.

Martha Durkin, a Lambert supporter, is a former attorney for Tucson Unified School District and a retired deputy city manager for the city of Tucson. She was appointed to the District 5 seat last year to fill it temporarily after a previous board member resigned.

She said she’s impressed by what she’s seen so far. “I see a lot of people who are working very, very hard,” to fix things, she said. But “the amount of work and the complexity make it difficult.”

Durkin is the favorite of the PCC board’s other members, who also support the chancellor. Most of them have donated to her campaign. Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild and former Mayor Bob Walkup also are among her backers.

Challenger Luis A. Gonzales is being backed by a citizens’ group that sees Lambert as ill-qualified — he has no prior experience running a large educational institution — and his administration as prone to secrecy.

Gonzales, a former state senator who spent eight years on the Legislature’s education committee, also is a former director of government operations for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and worked briefly as city manager for the city of South Tucson before his retirement.

Gonzales said Durkin is part of “a rubber-stamp board that doesn’t ask tough questions” of the Lambert administration.

His financial supporters include Ted Maxwell, vice president of the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, and two highly regarded community-college experts: Augustine Gallego, a past chairman of several national higher education groups and Zelema Harris, a former commissioner with PCC’s accreditor who worked at the school before and after Lambert’s 2013 arrival.

A third contender, Francis Saitta, is on the ballot but doesn’t appear to have a campaign website and did not provide a campaign statement to the Arizona Daily Star. Saitta, a former adjunct instructor of math and biology at PCC, sought the same seat in 2012, when he finished last with less than 20 percent of the vote.

None of the candidates stands to gain financially if elected. PCC board seats are unpaid positions with a term of six years.

Durkin said Lambert has made notable strides in areas such as workforce training and classroom upgrades and said she’ll push to keep improvements on track if elected.

Gonzales said it is hard to trust an administration that doesn’t always follow laws that protect the public’s right to know. For example, PCC officials have discussed a number of contentious topics — such as recent problems with the school’s aviation program — without providing advance notice to taxpayers as required by law.

District 5, which encompasses central Tucson and a large swath of the city’s west side, is the only district with a PCC election race this year. Two other board seats up for grabs will each be filled by acclamation because no other qualified candidates signed up.

The District 2 seat will be filled by Demion Clinco, a former state lawmaker and past president of the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation, who was appointed temporarily last year when a former PCC board member resigned.

In District 4, the seat being vacated by incumbent Scott Stewart will be occupied by former University of Arizona Provost Meredith Hay.

The election is Nov. 8.

Candidates for Pima Community College’s only contested board seat fielded questions this week about transparency, tuition rates and textbook costs.

A standing-room-only crowd turned out for a student-run forum for candidates seeking the District 5 seat on PCC’s Governing Board.

Martha Durkin, retired deputy manager for the city of Tucson and former attorney for the city’s largest school district, is making her first run for public office after filling the board seat on a temporary basis, and she’s being backed by the rest of the board.

Luis A. Gonzales, a former state senator who spent eight years on the Legislature’s education committee, is being backed by a citizens’ group whose past complaints about problems led to accreditation sanctions against PCC.

A third candidate, former PCC instructor Francis Saitta, is on the ballot but chose not to participate in the forum.

Durkin, a supporter of the college’s current administration, cited her passion for PCC and said the decades she spent as a public employee gave her the skills needed to oversee the school.

Gonzales called the college “the single most important educational institution in Southern Arizona,” and said his years in public life taught him how to figure out “where the skeletons are buried.”

The hour-long forum, held Thursday at El Rio Learning Center on West Speedway, centered mainly on written questions submitted by students and members of the audience.

On the question of transparency — whether PCC complies with laws and practices that protect the public’s right to know — Gonzales said lack of disclosure “is one of the biggest problems” facing the school. Durkin agreed there are weaknesses but said improvements she pushed for are already underway.

Asked about the PCC board’s decision this year to raise tuition for local students while reducing it for international students, Durkin defended the change as one that would help the college financially and said even with the changes, PCC still is in the bottom third statewide for in-state cost of attendance among community colleges.

Gonzales criticized the tuition plan, saying he wouldn’t have voted for it. PCC should not be raising local tuition while giving discounts to “wealthy students from China and the Middle East,” he said to a smattering of applause.

Candidates also were asked what they would do to protect PCC students from a common snafu, in which they register and buy a nonreturnable textbook for a course the college ends up canceling.

Gonzales said the college needs to negotiate a better return policy with its bookstore, and said students should be warned not to purchase textbooks in advance. Durkin said she favors expanding the use of free online textbooks.

The forum, attended by an estimated crowd of 100, covered a range of other topics from employee rights to federal student aid regulations. It was run by PCC’s Inter-Campus Council, in conjunction with the college’s Adult Basic Education civics and student leadership program.