El Camino is looking for approval to spend $8 million on a joint training facility for the Fire Tech Department, according to the Academic Affairs Area Plan for the 2017-18 school year.
Director of Public Relations Ann Garten said she could not comment on the Academic Affair document because she did not know much about the pricing or listing of said projects.
She added that EC president Dena Maloney wouldn’t be able to know much on it either in terms of the pricing and arrangements.
Maloney was unable to speak to The Union due to being in meetings all day on Tuesday, despite being asked to speak about this subject one week prior, Maloney’s secretary Susan Pickens said.
Dean of Industry and Technology Stephanie Rodriguez said the regional public training center has been in discussion since about 2009 and most recently with Maloney coming on, she got really behind it and has been really supportive in doing this.
“Her (Maloney’s) enthusiasm and just totally recognizing the need for this training center has been really behind that and helped getting the community involved,” Rodriguez said.
Getting the community involved is something that has been necessary for this project, but communication has been questionable, Fire Technology Coordinator in the Industry and Technology Division, Lee MacPherson said.
He added that for reasons beyond his knowledge, he had not been involved in the discussions regarding the new building and that it seemed like the project was focused more on talking to the community rather than staff.
“We’ve all been doing that, working with the different public safety programs, police and fire. So this regional center will cover all those areas,” Rodriguez said.
The proposed Public Safety Training Facility will benefit Fire Tech Department students according to the area plan, but the description for the unprioritized proposal does not list where the facility will be built or who will be involved in the joint services building.
Multiple calls were made to Torrance Fire Department but reporters were told to talk to the chief, who was in meetings.
Rodriquez said the discussion came up because the program outgrew the fire academy in Inglewood.
“We’re still in talking stages and we just had an advisory meeting, which included all the different public safety areas,” Rodriguez said. “Some of the local cities would be involved with this training because we would be involving a number of the fire and police offices in this area.”
There’s a major gap here in the South Bay area for training so a lot of fire and police have to go other places outside of the community to do the training, Rodriguez said.
“We are looking at bringing a lot of public safety together (from) lots of different areas,” Rodriguez said. “It’ll be really neat when it comes together (in) a couple years.”
Attempts to reach former president Tom Fallo, Director of Facilities Tom Brown and representatives at Torrance Fire Department were not returned.
Reporting by Phil Sidavong, Eric Ramos, Jimmy Nguyen, Alba Mejia, Jorge Villa and Emma DiMaggio.
