How does the Governing Board at Live Oak School District (LOSD) choose to approach a new building project using taxpayer funds? Their preferred methods include publicly claiming they don’t yet know the final location, scope, possible partnerships or timeframe for completion, or even the start date, of the new project. Putting a bond measure (Measure N) on the current ballot asking Live Oak taxpayers for $45 million and then, apparently, figuring out the details later.

Is this a plan?

When requesting $45 million from voters, pesky unrefined details like where/when/what to build have a tendency to pop up. There is another issue with Measure N; the likely destruction of the Elena Baskin Live Oak Senior Center (LOSC) located in Santa Cruz on Capitola Road.

The LOSC was built as a senior center in the late ‘70s and has operated as a senior center every day since. LOSD insists, in an Orwellian fashion, to call the site a “hub.” It’s hard to bulldoze a senior center; it’s easier to bulldoze a hub. Are these attempted linguistic gymnastics meant to assuage the conscience of voters or decision makers at LOSD?

In 2005, LOSD provided tenants with a lease that was extendable for 40 years. Everything seemed to be working according to the will of the voters, except by leveraging technicalities, the district was able to rescind the original lease and send a series of eviction notices.

One might be inclined to assume the district has no other locations to build, but that is not the case. By the district’s own admissions, they already own other possible viable locations that are better suited for workforce housing.

All of this is considered with a bleak financial backdrop of LOSD having an approximately $2 million deficit still to address, according to temporary Superintendent Patrick Sanchez. This pairs with decades of declining enrollment, which sparks the logical follow-up question of should a shrinking, financially overburdened district, be prioritizing expansion of its physical infrastructure?

To the degree discernible, if workforce housing at this site came to fruition, LOSD workers would not be allowed to own their unit. Almost all units would be studios and one bedrooms. This would not be a permanent housing solution, as teachers would be required to move after a few years. This model — small school district as housing developer and operator — appears to focus temporary assistance on “new teachers” through reduced rent for a few years.

Senior services has continued to champion the idea of an intergenerational facility at the senior center location. This proposal has not been adequately addressed by LOSD to date.

The facilities at the senior center have suffered deferred maintenance under the district’s ownership for years. The district continually attempts to use their deferred maintenance as a post hoc rationale for eviction of senior services from the senior center. LOSD’s demands that nonprofit tenants pay to fix elements of their deferred maintenance or face eviction started before, and continued after, the district got a $44 million bond from Live Oak residents earlier this year. That bond was for capital improvement projects. Combined with the current Measure N, the district has asked Live Oak residents for $89 million this year.

Meanwhile, in contradiction to the existing lease, the district abruptly ceased janitorial, landscape and trash services at the senior center. Those costs have been forced onto the nonprofit tenants. If LOSD were to evict the tenants, the rapidly impending result would be the creation of a homeless encampment directly across the street from an elementary school.

LOSD states they will not put money into the facilities they own at the senior center because it doesn’t directly educate children. Accepting that logic, a good faith offer was made by senior services to purchase the property at the appraised market rate in order to save the senior center. Another idea was to pay five years of upfront rent to help LOSD with their current cash crunch. Both offers were refused by LOSD.

Maybe LOSD would be better landlords to their staff? To assume that you’d have to believe their current landlording abilities aren’t achieved through a lack of skill but are a choice.

The current condition records the district as owning buildings at the senior center it refuses to maintain, or sell; but might lease for a handful of months but only under conditions that would allow them to quickly nullify the lease agreement without cause at any time.

Is this living up to the conditions under which the county and voters gave LOSD the senior center originally? If not, consider contacting the LOSD Board President Kristin Pfotenhuaer to ask: Is this a plan? Apparently, the pesky details are to be worked out later.

Corey Azevedo is Executive Director of Senior Network Services in Santa Cruz. Save the senior center rally will be held at 2 p.m. Oct. 10th at 1777A Capitola Road.