Kathy O’Connor, chair of the athletics department, brought the Academic Senate a proposal to purchase a new 32-passenger bus.

“We’ve been trying to do this for many years and we haven’t had much progress,” O’Connor said. “So we decided to bring it through program review.”

The idea is for City College to develop a plan to fund over time, replacing some of the vans City College uses. It was emphasized that they would not be doing away with all of the vans, only what was necessary. Health and safety issues involving the vans were one of Monda’s main concerns.

City College currently uses a fleet of vans to accommodate students and faculty for programs and certain events.

The 13 athletics programs have been using the small buses to get around.

Monda said it’s not safe to ask our coaches, who have been working about eight hours a day, to drive their students another eight hours back and forth to games.

The 32-person bus would be available mornings and evenings, and would be used for sporting events as well as other campus-wide programs.

Now City College hires drivers who are required to have a special license to drive the buses.

“What about maintenance? What about all the costs involved?” asked Oscar Zavala, senator of educational support. “There really needs to be a long range plan on all of these vehicles.”

“All of the vans are on a maintenance plan, so instead of maintaining three you’d maintain one,” Monda said. “So actually it would probably be a less expensive proposition.”

Last year there was an estimate on a 32-passenger shuttle bus, although the price wasn’t given at the time.

As for questions of if the bus will be “green” Monda assumes the college will look for the most energy efficient bus to use.

The senate concluded with an all-in-favor motion for the proposal.