Posted on 09/19/2013 8:30:54 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano may eventually enjoy a beautifully renovated home as president of the University of California system. The UC Board of Regents voted Wednesday to begin repairs on the historic Blake House — a multiyear process that will likely cost the financially struggling system millions of dollars.
The 13,200-square-foot Blake House has traditionally been the home of the UC president since it was donated to the school in 1957, but has recently fallen into such disrepair that Napolitano's predecessor — Mark Yudof — never lived there.
UC Regents said that the $620,000 they unanimously authorized will simply make sure that the dilapidated mansion doesn't collapse, Reuters reports.
"We were just trying to keep it together so it doesn't fall apart ... The last time I was at the Blake House was about eight years ago and I thought it was pretty run down then," one Regent told Reuters.
The San Francisco Gate reported in 2008 that UC administrators predicted that necessary repairs and renovations to the house would cost between $8 million and $9 million. In 2010, this number went up to $10 million, according to the Los Angeles Times.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Can’t she just move into the Alpha Chi Upsilon house?
I may never understand certain things. What the heck qualifications does Janet Napolitano have to run the UC system? They allegedly did some nationwide search, and came up with her? Really????
I hear they are letting her keep the old gray carpet.
$10 million to renovate the place???
Can’t they just build her a new mansion for $2 million, if they really need the head of the UC system to live in a mansion at all????
Is it worth it to spend $10 million to renovate that place??
Or, how about let private donations from liberals pay the freight if it’s that important to renovate the place.
And as the UC Regents vote to increase tuition and cut tuition assistance programs the little unwashed students get to listen to her blabber about the amazing King Oblaba.
Her first task on the job will be to remove all the fences and to weld shut the doors on the security department so they can’t function.
Liberal Royalty sucking up and squandering We The People’s nickles and dimes, ya think?
Isn’t that why we had a revolution to rid this country of Royalty sucking off We The People?
Seems like a perfect fit. U of C, or ‘’Moonbat U’’ and Janet ‘’The Border is Secure’’ Napolitano, two moronic schools of thought.
I believe that’s WILL spend, not may. Tributes at the queen’s feet, don’t you know.
Occupy Blake House?
My guess, the doors need to be enlarged and the piers double supported.
how about People’s Park?
there were 300 + applicants for that position but since she has proved herself to be a good liberal nazi and just what the ruling elite can use to further corrupt the Ca University system, etc................
I think I am appreciating more and more, the reason why college tuitions are sky rocketing.
Richard Vedder, Director of the Center for College Afordability observes that colleges are not only in the education business.... they are in the housing business, the entertainment business; they’re in the lodging business; they’re in the food business. Hell, one university runs a travel agency which ordinary people off the street can use.
Consider Princeton, which recently built a resplendent $136 million student residence with leaded glass windows and a cavernous oak dining hall (paid for in part with a $30 million tax-deductible donation by Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman). The dorm’s cost approached $300,000 per bed.
Meanwhile, university endowments don’t pay taxes on their income. Harvard’s $31 billion endowment, which has been financed by tax-deductible donations, may be America’s largest tax shelter.
Some college officials are also compensated more handsomely than CEOs. Since 2000, New York University has provided $90 million in loans, many of them zero-interest and forgivable, to administrators and faculty to buy houses and summer homes on Fire Island and the Hamptons.
Former Ohio State President Gordon Gee (who resigned in June after making defamatory remarks about Catholics) earned nearly $2 million in compensation last year while living in a 9,630 square-foot Tudor mansion on a 1.3-acre estate. The Columbus Camelot includes $673,000 in art decor and a $532 shower curtain in a guest bathroom. Ohio State also paid roughly $23,000 per month for Mr. Gee’s soirees and half a million for him to travel the country on a private jet. Such taxpayer-funded extravagance has not made its way into Mr. Obama’s speeches.
Colleges have also used the gusher of taxpayer dollars to hire more administrators to manage their bloated bureaucracies and proliferating multicultural programs. The University of California system employs 2,358 administrative staff in just its president’s office.
“Every college today practically has a secretary of state, a vice provost for international studies, a zillion public relations specialists,” Mr. Vedder says. “My university has a sustainability coordinator whose main message, as far as I can tell, is to go out and tell people to buy food grown locally. . . . Why? What’s bad about tomatoes from Pennsylvania as opposed to Ohio?”
And now we have the University of California system renovating a mansion for Janet Napolitano.
“Cash-strapped,” gotta laugh. So is our county school district, except for all the money they have to spend on crap.
*I may never understand certain things. What the heck qualifications does Janet Napolitano have to run the UC system? They allegedly did some nationwide search, and came up with her? Really????*
I THINK THEY SHOULD CATCH A STRAY CAT AND INSTALL IT IN HER PLACE.
Probably wouldn’t do any worse.
Infuriates me to no end. I have two at UCs, one just graduated from UC Berkeley, the other at another UC. Don’t ask how much tuition has gone up (OK, you can ask) = 75% over the past decade.
And, it’s going for THIS kind of CRAP?
One kid = electrical and software engineering so he HAS to go to college.
Other kid = Writing/English. Works for a start-up that’s paying her partially in founder’s stock. I know a lot of them don’t make it but if they do...that’s how Microsoft paid its employees in the beginning...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.