Former PCC Board President Geoffrey Baum in Bid to Return to Area 1 Seat, Cites Experience

Thirteen years after he stepped off the Pasadena City College board, Geoffrey Baum wants back on it — and he already has company on the ballot.

Baum, who served three terms on the board and two as its president before leaving in 2013, announced in June that he is running for the Area 1 seat on the Pasadena Area Community College District board in the November 2026 election. He is not running unopposed: the second candidate, La Cañada Flintridge city commissioner and PCC alumnus Francis Pollara, has also declared.

Area 1 covers La Cañada Flintridge and the Linda Vista, San Rafael and Madison Heights neighborhoods of West Pasadena. Whoever wins joins the seven-member board that sets policy and approves the budget for a college serving more than 20,000 students.

Baum’s pitch is experience. After leaving the local board, he spent 12 years on the California Community Colleges Board of Governors, where he was twice elected president, and six years on the PCC Foundation board.

“Pasadena City College changes lives, and it does so at a moment when families across our community need it most,” Baum said in the statement announcing his candidacy. “After the Eaton Fire, after years of rising costs, students and parents are looking to PCC for an affordable, high-quality path to a degree, a transfer, or a good job.”

In written answers to Pasadena Now, Baum said the timing is what pulled him back. He pointed to decisions he has handled before — bond oversight, transfer and workforce pathways, and now fire recovery — and argued his ties to state funding and policy machinery could bring resources back to the foothill communities. “The college has done this kind of workforce response before,” he wrote. “The task now is to do it with urgency.”

That recovery is the backdrop to the race. The Eaton Fire, which began in the foothills above Altadena on Jan. 7, 2025, killed at least 19 people and destroyed 9,414 structures across roughly 14,000 acres, according to Los Angeles County — one of the most destructive wildfires in state history. Many PCC students, faculty and staff were among those displaced, and the college has begun training students in construction trades aimed at the rebuilding effort.

Baum’s stated platform leans on affordability and workforce training. He said his priority for families weighing whether the college is worth the cost is textbooks, pointing to zero-textbook-cost degrees he worked on at the state level, along with protecting transfer pathways to the University of California and California State University systems. He also said PCC should set clear standards for how faculty and students use artificial intelligence rather than react to it.

His candidacy arrives as the college turns a page. PCC marked its 100th commencement in June, and its superintendent-president, José A. Gómez, was confirmed in July 2024 — meaning a returning trustee would be working with an administration largely assembled since Baum last held office.

For now, the district’s voters have a choice already taking shape, and a decision that won’t be settled until November — if the election calendar holds.

For more, visit https://geoffreybaum.org/