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Posted by: thepinetree on 10/08/2009 03:02 PM
Updated by: thepinetree on 10/08/2009 03:03 PM
Expires: 01/01/2014 12:00 AM
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Governor Schwarzenegger Delivers Remarks at Community College Trustees’ Leadership Congress Video Enclosed
San Francisco, CA...Transcript of Speech...DR. SCOTT: Let me join all the other dignitaries which have welcomed you to the great state of California. I must warn you that if you stay in San Francisco very long you'll fulfill the words of that old song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." It is a great city and we are proud to welcome all of the members of the ACCT. And now it's my real honor to introduce the Governor of this great state, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Governor Schwarzenegger was first elected the Governor of California in 2003. He was reelected in 2006 by an overwhelming margin. You no doubt have read about Governor Schwarzenegger and all of his accomplishments since he's been in office...
Governor Schwarzenegger delivered remarks at the 40th Annual Association of Community College Trustees’ Leadership Congress
He's become a national leader in environmental legislation. He's taken California through a very difficult time. And he has been a real friend to the community colleges.
But let me tell you why he is a real friend to community colleges. Because, you see, Arnold Schwarzenegger can tell a very moving and powerful story about what California community colleges did for him. He arrived in this country as an immigrant from Austria. He was already a worldwide champion, Mr. Universe of a bodybuilding contest and so he had presence, he had unbelievable drive and he had intelligence. But he wanted the educational tools in order to succeed and he found them at Santa Monica College where that college, through training in the English language, through its work in the world of business he is an entrepreneur by heart and so when he came to Santa Monica College he took business courses and that of course catapulted him into the kind of star that he became in the world of movies and also, of course, eventually in the political realm.
I had the privilege of being in the state legislature and to work with Governor Schwarzenegger. I recall that he spearheaded a bill, Senate Bill 70, which had to do with giving $20 million to career technical programs. I was fortunate to author the bill and he signed it and now that's grown to over $40 million.
He signed another bill of mine, I recall, Senate Bill 361 which changed the funding formula for community colleges. He has always been a friend and when I completed my senate term, Governor Schwarzenegger said, Jack, I'd like for you to serve as Chancellor of the California Community Colleges. Now, you can't turn down a request like that, especially when you stand next to him. (Laughter)
So I have been proud to work with him and he has been a great friend. He has actually visited the office and talked to me about how much he cares about community college.
So I am pleased to introduce him but before I introduce him, those of us in the community college wanted to present him an award and we in the California community colleges have this award we're giving him today as The Community College Governor. (Applause)
So I'm now so proud to introduce to you the Governor of California, the honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Applause)
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
Thank you very much. Thank you and thank you so much, Jack, for this wonderful award. I tell you, obviously when you are in my position, having won many world championships in power lifting and in bodybuilding and having been involved in movies, you get a lot of trophies and you get a lot of medals and you get a lot of awards. But this, without the any doubt here today is the most recent (Laughter)
All jokes aside you always have this thought to warm everyone up with a little joke. But I just want to say thank you so much, I really appreciate that. It's not what I came here for but I really appreciate that very much. And I want to say thank you again to Jack and thank you also to Tom and to Arthur for having me here today.
And this is a great great gathering. And I want to say there's a lot of people that are here in the audience that are very dedicated men and women, dedicated towards education. I understand that we have more than a thousand trustees and more than a thousand presidents altogether out there, all leaders of colleges, of community colleges around this country.
And so I just wanted to stop by, basically and say welcome to California. Welcome to California and it's such a great honor and pleasure for us to host all of you here in our beautiful state. I also wanted to congratulate and thank you for your services. You do a specific service which is in a very important segment of our education system, which sometimes has been neglected and that is community colleges.
But I want to just take a moment and to just say thank you also to my very good friend and the Chancellor of California's community colleges, Jack Scott. Because Jack was a very important leader, education leader in Sacramento and I've worked with him over the last five years and we passed a lot of different bills that were good for community colleges and for education in general. You know, always as governor you rely on experts amongst the legislators that you can work with, if it is in economics or if it is with veterans affairs or if it is environmental issues. He happened to be the guy that I went to always when it has to do with education.
So we have accomplished a lot and he has been an extraordinary leader. But I think that he is also the real deal. He was not one of those legislators that was just talking about education. I mean, he came and led the community college in Pasadena and did such an extraordinary job there. So he was a real friend and very, very knowledgeable person so we were very lucky to have Jack there. And I actually miss him now that he's not there but I know he was termed out because we have these crazy term limits here in California and people that are that experienced like him then have to leave and move on.
But it was really actually in the end great because he then took on this great great challenge of leading the community colleges here in California. So let's give him a great great hand for the great work that he has been doing for California. (Applause)
Now, community colleges serve such a vital role and so many, actually, vital roles. They offer a first rate education that is accessible and affordable literally to everybody. They are the gateway to our four year universities. I don't know if you know but in California here we have almost 70 percent of our university graduates are community college transfers. So it just shows to you how popular in our state community colleges are.
And they are also a leading provider of job training and career tech education and I absolutely love career tech education. I am a product of career tech education from Austria. So this is why I am very adamant about that we always have career tech education and the funding for career tech education. Community colleges train 80 percent of California's firefighters, law enforcement officers and EMTs and 70 percent of California's nurses.
Just to show you that a few years ago when I came into office we had a tremendous shortage of nurses and then we made an agreement and worked with the community colleges and now since then we have provided we have created an additional 20,000 nurses here in California, so all because of community colleges.
So for all those that say that the only action is when you have a four year college degree or you go to university and that's really the only way to measure success, I think they're making a big mistake because the fact of the matter is they should (applause)
Those people that think that way should think about it again when they want to get their house built and they need a carpenter and they need a plumber and they need an electrician and they need an expert to put the solar panels on top of the rooftop or the people that go to a shop and get their car fixed and want to get their engine tuned up and so on. They should try to see if that four year college provides this kind of education. And they should see when they go to a hospital and when the doctor's already at home, then there is a nurse actually sitting there that is saving your butt, that is really what is important. They should think about that.
And this is why I'm such a big big fan of career tech education, such a huge fan of community colleges. And as Jack Scott said, I know a little bit about community colleges because I'm a product of a community college in Santa Monica. When I came over here in 1968, I was a bodybuilding champion and a lifting champion but my ambitions were way beyond that. I didn't just want to be a champion because, you know, that's something that's good when you're a young person to go and compete and lift all those weights, 50 tons of weights a day but I wanted to move on. I came to America because I wanted to be a champion and I wanted to be a successful businessman, I wanted to get into the movie business, I wanted to make millions of dollars and be rich and famous. That's why I came to America. (Applause)
So I knew that with bodybuilding alone you can't do that. And so I knew that I had to get smart and first and most importantly I had to learn the language. So I was struggling the first year with the language but then in 1969 I enrolled in Santa Monica City College and took a class in English. The next semester I took two classes of English. And then all of a sudden I had a chance to run into a counselor who said, look, it seems to me that you talk a lot about business and you want to be really successful. Why don't you take some business classes. So I started enrolling in business classes, in microeconomics and macroeconomics and then I took some classes in America history, American Indian history and in accounting and marketing, communications and the list went on and on and on.
Let me tell you something, that I am so appreciative of the extraordinary education that I got at Santa Monica City College because that enabled me then to eventually get a four year degree but at the same time it enabled me to get the knowledge that I needed to start a mail order business, to start a brick laying business, to get into the restaurant business, to start a production company and on and on and on, all because of that education. (Applause)
And as Jack knows, many times we sit in our office and we talk about education and all kinds of different things in order to discuss the various different bills and legislation that is being worked on upstairs. And just recently I sat together with a bunch of lawmakers and we were talking about environmental issues, how we have to reduce greenhouse gases. And we were talking about it and I said, you know, I think there is a way of reducing greenhouse gases. We are right now talking about water infrastructure and if you reduce the water usage and do conservation by 20 percent, that could get us an extra percent of reduction on greenhouse gases.
So they all looked at me and they said, how did you come up with this 1 percent? And I said, well, it's actually a little bit less than 1 percent. How did you come up with that? Wait a minute, 20 percent, I have 8 percent reduction. And the other one said 4 percent the other one said 10 percent. And I said, wait a minute. If you take 20 percent of a hundred, that's 20, if you take 20 percent of 20, that's 4 and if you take 20 percent of 4, that is 0.8. So that's how I came up with the number. I learned my math at Santa Monica City College. You get it? (Applause)
So this is why I say I was very happy to go to the math classes in Santa Monica City College because you never know. Because my kids, two of them are in college now but the other two are young and they always say to me, they come home, the 12 year old says, why do I need this stuff that I'm learning in school? And I said, let me tell you, that math you will need some day. You don't know what profession you're getting into but you always need math. You always need the language skills and all of those things. So this is why it is so important.
But the bottom line is this is why I love community colleges. And especially in this economic crisis your work is even more important, because I believe community colleges will play a critical role in our nation's economic recovery.
As a matter of fact, this is an institution that we're talking about that I call an institution of hope. You provide the hope to the laid off father who desperately wants to provide for his family and who needs to be retrained for his second career. And you provide the hope to the young woman turned away from the university who desperately wants to pursue her educational dreams. And to provide the hope to the budding entrepreneur who wants to go out there and create businesses on his own but needs some guidance on how to run a business.
Or you provide hope to an immigrant like myself that wants to learn the language and he wants to go and connect with America and be successful in this country.
This is what community colleges represent is hope, hope and hope. And all of you here are the instruments of that hope. What a tremendous privilege, I can tell you.
And it is also of course a tremendous challenge. We are very much aware of that and Jack and I have talked about it many times, about budgets. I know that across the country there are budget cuts. At the world now after this whole budget crisis and financial crisis and housing crisis and economic crisis, the fact is the world is one third worth less.
And this is the reality and this is why we in California also had to make cuts twice this year. One time we had to deal with $36 billion in February, $36 billion shortfall of revenues. And then again this July with an additional $23 billion shortfall on revenues. So of course those cuts are severe cuts and they had an effect on all the programs including community colleges.
But you are being asked now to do more with less, just like in the private sector. But I have absolute faith and confidence in Jack and in all of the community colleges here in our state and then across the country, faith in all of you. I know that by working together and by sharing innovative ideas, which is what this convention of course is all about, we can push through these dark nights and then we have brighter days coming. They know they will be coming because there is one thing that is certain. Even though there's lots of uncertainties here in California and in America, there is one thing always that is certain and that is that we always come back.
America always comes back and will be bigger, better and stronger than ever before. (Applause)
So I just want to say to all of you good luck with your work here today and we want to wish you all the best of time. And just remember, I'm a big believer in a combination of working hard and also enjoying yourself. And so that while you are here, don't waste the time and just do the work. Take your time and look around San Francisco; it's a beautiful town. The Bay Area is beautiful. Then we have the towering redwood trees. And then we have, of course, Hollywood and we have Disneyland and we have the beautiful coastline. There are so many wonderful things.
And what I'm basically saying is I'm trying to do a little hype in California so you stay and travel around and stay a long time and spend some money because we need your revenues. That's the bottom line. So thank you, thank you very much. (Applause)
Thank you. And just to let you know, I am going back now to Sacramento because we are in the middle of our negotiations. We are negotiating and this is for a lot of people that are not from California you don't know that, that's why I want to tell you.
We are negotiating right now to upgrade our water infrastructure. It is something that Pat Brown started in the '60s and did a great job but it was never finished, our water infrastructure. They never built the canal, they never fixed the delta and did all of those things because California at that point ran out of money. So now we have been since decades talking about water infrastructure and we've got to bring it up to date.
And of course I was elected and became governor because they didn't want to just hear the dialogue but they wanted to see action. And that's what I'm creating right now, because we have heard enough excuses now about why they couldn't get it done and why it's complicated and why it's difficult and all those kind of things. Now we want to create the action.
So this is why we are sitting there every day now and negotiating with the legislators. And I made it very clear to the legislators and to the leaders that if this does not get done then I will veto a lot of their legislation, a lot of their bills. So that should inspire them to go and to get the job done and to get the water for not only 18 million people but for the 50 million people that we will be in the near future. By the time this water project is built, which is 15 years from now, we will be 50 million people. So this is why it is very important that we work work work and to get it done before this weekend.
So thank you very much and I'm off to Sacramento. Thank you very much. Thank you all. (Applause)
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