Cabrillo president Matt Wetstein revealed a lurking, campus-wide problem in an August 2019 guest commentary for the Santa Cruz Sentinel: the attractive “curb appeal” of the college masks an aging, breaking infrastructure badly in need of costly repair, modernization and replacement.

Wetstein cites a recent sewer line rupture under the cafeteria that is likely to incur a six-figure repair bill, a sum that will consume a large percentage of Cabrillo’s deferred maintenance allowance. Last year’s allowance was $263,100, what Wetstein describes as “pitiful” in light of necessary fixes.

The state legislature—that Wetstein describes as a “dead-beat dad”— is responsible for setting community college funding, along with voter approved property tax revenues.

A new formula for distributing funding works against Cabrillo because of the college’s demographic, making it one of the lowest-funded campuses in the system. At the same time, government is looking to mandate that community colleges help solve the worsening homeless crisis without offering the additional funding to cover costs.

Wetstein estimates that a doubling of Cabrillo’s funding would allow overdue and necessary repairs and upgrades while providing requested services to students and the wider community, but the future outlook is for a worsening of the current situation.