Goodwill Board Disappointing; NO on Q and S

Dear Editor,

As a previous board member of the Goodwill, I was disheartened to read your May 1st front-page news story about the organization. The current CEO showed poor leadership in threatening to leave his position if he was not given a huge increase in compensation. I was disappointed to learn the board of directors then gave him an increase of approximately $100,000 in compensation (salary and benefits) bringing his total compensation to over $300,000.

How many donations of household goods does it take to pay this extra $100,000? This is money that otherwise would have spent on important job training programs. I did some research on other perks the CEO receives above the $300,000 in compensation, these include a new car valued at $50,000 every three years, the Goodwill paying for wife to attend some conferences, etc. Again, money taken away from job training programs.

It was also disappointing to read that the Goodwill Board of Directors recently sold, upon the CEO’s recommendation, the Santa Cruz headquarters in a private deal, not going out to the open market. Goodwill officials think they got a good deal, but they will never know what the open market would have given them. Commercial property in Santa Cruz is at a premium because there is so little available.

If the above actions occurred in a government agency we would all be demanding a grand jury investigation.

Sincerely, Nita Gizdich

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Vote NO on Q and S, the Cabrillo and Public Library Bonds

$310 Million for Cabrillo and $67 Million for Libraries … For What???

The current bond measures for the June 7 election are insane.

No accounting for costs, very little work for the amount of our money they get.

$310 Million could rebuild the entire Cabrillo campus several times. Yet it includes no new buildings.

New business properties cost about $200 per square foot to build. For this bond you could build:

• 1,500,000 Square Feet of high quality office buildings. That is 3 times the size of the Capitola Mall.
• The Millennium Tower, at 645 feet is the tallest building in San Francisco, cost $350 million to build in 2009.

It’s impossible to justify $310 million to do some remodeling and electronic updating to a relatively small campus.

The same goes for the Santa Cruz Library System. $67 Million?? Enough to buy 113 houses in Santa Cruz County at $600 thousand each. What do we get: 3000 square feet addition in Aptos; A rebuild of the Capitola library; some computer updating and remodeling.

Repairs on 10 relative small libraries. That’s over $6 million per building average. It costs about $1 million dollars to build a 3000 square foot high quality house. So the library bosses are telling us it will cost the equivalent of building 6 luxury houses to fix up one library.

The figures for both bonds are insane. For sure the schools and libraries need our support but giving these governments, which they are, such massive sums at one time is asking for fraud, losses and overspending.

Consider it takes 30-40 years to pay off a bond with interest these 2 bonds will cost you, your children and grandchildren almost $ ONE BILLION to pay off when you include the interest we will pay. It will cause higher living and rental costs for people and businesses.

Vote NO on Q, the Cabrillo bond and Vote NO on S, the library bond. Let’s find a more affordable way to accomplish what actually needs to be done.

R. Briton, Santa Cruz County