A $20 million request by the Health Sciences and Athletics Division to further expand the new Public Safety Training Center at El Camino College is pending approval from the Planning and Budget Committee.

Funding requests for the center’s expansion were shown during the Planning and Budget Committee meeting over Zoom on May 16 for review.

“It’s a statement [of] desire to have a comprehensive safety training program for El Camino in the future,” Vice President of Academic Affairs Carlos Lopez said.

Students who are training to become paramedics, firefighters and emergency medical technicians are currently being trained at a center located in Inglewood.

The new center will be located near parking Lot L and will have a bigger training space for students.

“We want to have a [new] up-to-date state-of-the-art program,” El Camino Business Manager Jeffrey Hinshaw said.

There was a groundbreaking ceremony for the new center on Sept. 29, 2023 and it is not known when it will officially be finished, according to the El Camino website.

The new center has already received $10 million in state funding but has requested more to “add locker rooms with showers, classrooms, restrooms, shooting range, mat room, administration space, computer lab, courtroom simulator and labs by way of modular buildings or brick and mortar buildings,” according to the funding request sheet.

“[This is why] it’s a big dollar amount,” Hinshaw said.

“It’s only the big [money] requests that take more time for discussion [and planning],” Grace Ou, El Camino planning analyst, said.

The request has to be approved by members of the Planning and Budget Committee, to then get approved by the cabinet to officially start implementing the funding for construction costs.

“The money will come from a local bond, [and it] doesn’t impact the general fund at all,” Hinshaw said.

Another reason for the request is because “current facilities are not adequate to house the necessities for [Police Officer Standards and Training] Academies and [Emergency Medical Technician] program,” according to the funding request sheet.

Requests with large amount of money mean a lot of discussions and time between the vice presidents, members of cabinet, as well as the other committees that represent El Camino.

“It could take up to 10 years,” Lopez said.

Ou said the Planning and Budget Committee has to go over around 300 requests.

“It’s like a puzzle, we have all these funding requests, we just need to figure out the most important ones,” she said.

The “Division of the State Architect” oversees all of the construction being done with the building, so a lot of the decisions need to be communicated through them.

“[We also need to see] if some of these requests impact students [and] it’s a process improvement that we’re working on,” Ou said.