Share: mail

PCC’s newly elected trustee Bill Thomson attended the Board of Trustees meeting last night, after defeating Charles Nelson for the sole contested seat in the Tuesday election.Thomson ran as a candidate of consensus, not change, but issues from his platform are likely to change PCC nonetheless.

Thomson credits a remarkable consensus in the PCC community that the time is right to make these changes happen.

“I’m happy not to be swimming upstream,” Thomson said. “When you join an elected board for the first time, you need to walk carefully. I think that the college is really focused in with PUSD issues. My sense is the community at large is together on this.”

Thomson benefits from long relationships with members of the board, the PCC Foundation, the PUSD and the city council, but in recent weeks he has also met with PCC faculty and President Paulette Perfumo.

Thomson said he encountered openness in these meetings to the idea of making vocational programs more effective through expanded counseling, and he believes the wider community will support that. “We have to find a way to raise some more money privately to fund the counseling,” he said.

Increasing PCC’s involvement in its community has been a point of consensus among the board, Dr. Perfumo, and both candidates.

One key contested issue was whether campus police should be allowed to carry firearms, which Nelson supported but on which Thomson declined to take a position. Thomson said, “That’s an issue that is not going away, and something the board is going to have to address. I think Charles ran a good campaign. I don’t think we differed on the issues that much.

Follow: rssyoutubeinstagrammail

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.