SPRING 2013 BAR MEETING
Tacoma Community College
March 26th and 27th, 2014
Thursday, March 26th
Welcome
Chair Jennifer Strother called the meeting to order at 10am
Welcome by Dr. Pamela Transue, President TCC
Mary Ann Brummond, TCC Logistics
State Board Funding Formula
Mary Alice Grobins, VP Business and Administrative Service at Skagit Valley College
Mary Alice had a power point presentation.
Currently, colleges receive share of state funding from SBCTC through Based Plus Allocation model. This
formula was developed in the late 1990’s. All colleges have a base budget that is predictable from year
to year and then we receive one-time and variable funds.
A college will be re-based if they do not meet the enrollment target. Two year average enrollments
must be at least 96% of the college enrollment target. IF not met, the college must meet 96% of target
in the next year to keep their base allocation funding. If they can’t meet the 96% in that third year, the
following year their base allocation will be reduced.
There is now a Taskforce looking at the funding formula again. They are looking at what happens if they
change our entire allocation to performance funding/student achievement. The smaller the college, the
bigger share of the allocation you would receive, so there is concern with this formula.
The Student Achievement funding does have a new funding formula in fiscal year 1314.
OFM, Economic Feasibility Studies
Sandy McGough, Consultant in Statewide Accounting
Sandy reviews all the Economic Feasibility Studies for approval when they arrive at OFM from State
Agencies.
EFS helps determine if accepting or disbursing electronic funds is economically feasible. ACH transfers,
credit cards, debit cards, etc. OFM must determine if the benefits outweigh the costs. We need to go
through this process when we have new or expanded electronic payment projects.
RCW 43.41.180 requires an EFS. SAAM Chapter 40.
Forms needed are available on OFM’s E-Commerce website.
Working Lunch – Leadership Communications Training & Performance Coaching for Leaders
Betty Lochner, Cornerstone Consulting
A powerpoint presentation was used
In order to be a good leader you need to provide informal positive feedback frequently, be an active
listener, deal with issues early on and don’t let them pile up, be tough on issues and tender on people,
avoid assumptions, make your expectations clear.
LEAN Process Training
James Craswell, Bellevue College
A Powerpoint presentation was used.
When looking at processes to make more LEAN, think of 5 S’s – sort, set in order, shine, standardize and
sustain.
State Treasurer’s Office Banking Contracts
Ryan Pitroff, Banking Services Manager
Why, How and When, Requirements for Bank Accounts
The SAAM Manual and RCWs define the Role of the Treasurer
We are required to have a contract for banking services
The best way to get a contract is to do a Request for Proposal (RFP). RFP must be reviewed by AAG.
The treasurer’s website has a list of banking institutions that are qualified public depositories in our
state.
Banks will require certain things in their contracts that colleges must sign.
Ryan recommends extending contracts by amendment.
Colleges are not able to add on to the state’s banking services contract. There is no master contract for
colleges to use.
Ryan has boilerplates contract documents and former RFPs from other colleges that he could share with
us.
Central Washington University with US Bank and Western Washington University with Wells Fargo have
banking services contract that have WHIPE language that will allow us to piggy back on those contracts.
We would then not have to reinvent the wheel and they probably have good pricing from their volumes.
Friday, March 28th
BAC Report
BAC heard that 14 colleges have upgraded to Megamations. Joann said she is way behind on looping
BAR group in. We are thinking those 14 colleges are on the facilities side. So the 14 BAR colleges didn’t
realize they were uploaded.
Question about how applied Baccelaureate degrees at colleges will impact IPEDS? Joann and Jason are
not sure and will research this for us. Bellevue has these but she doesn’t think it is impacting her IPEDS
reporting.
Minutes & Treasurer’s Report
Minutes from the Winter BAR meeting were approved as is, no amendments
Karen Mottner gave the Treasurer’s report. Our balance is appox. $6,800.
At our May meeting we will start the discussion about dues.
State Treasurer’s Office – State Master Contract for Merchant Services
Ryan Pitroff, Banking Services
Recent changes and college use of contract
OST has a new contract with Bank of America for merchant services. This includes VISA, MasterCard,
Discover, and Pin Debits. Contract allows the use of any processor. They still have a separate agreement
with American Express transactions.
If colleges are using terminals through bank of America merchant services, we will need to update those
terminals with new models that support First Data.
Agencies with POS Systems need to migrate from TSYS to FirstData Merchant IDs
Square readers for SMART Phones. You pay a lot of fees to have that transaction settled. Because of
the way the money flows with the software and how the money is settled. We can only use state
contract or our banking services for merchant services, or we violate contract. So we cannot use a 3rd
party processor like Square or Paypal. PayPal and Square also violate state PDPC laws. However, most
of the large banks, that we may have our banking services through, might have their own electronic
service that would be available for this type of new technology. It is expensive, but it is available.
Prepaid Cards and Payroll Cards. The state treasurer has a payroll card available, currently through Bank
of America but they are migrating to US Bank. This conversion will happen this summer. New contract
starts July 1, they might have a 60 day transition.
Ryan recommends that we renegotiate merchant services fees after initial contracts with our banks are
up. Earning credits are now low, so we probably can’t take as much of an advantage of using our
earning credits towards banking fees.
The treasurer’s office will do a review of our current merchant fees for us and will let us know how our
fees compare to state contract and where we could possibly get savings. Contact Ryan Pitroff if
interested.
MOOCs and Coursera – University of Washington Professional and Continuing Ed
Karen Dowdell-Sandford, Sr Director Online Programs at UW
Current state and future trends in online education
A MOOC is a massive open online course. An instructor will create a course that is a certain number of
weeks, all students start with week 1. There might be over 10,000 students enrolled, up to 150,000
students. So the instructor is very limited and it is more of a peer to peer involvement model.
Coursera is a for-profit company that provides the platform for these courses. Edx is a nonprofit
company that provides these types of classes.
These are high cost courses and create a challenge for higher education.
State Board Updates – Including current status on SAO audits, financial statements, CTC Link
There was a handout with the updates.
NACUBO Annual Meeting in July is in Seattle and Bill Gates is the speaker – great opportunity
Supplemental Retiree Cost will now be treated the same way we do revolving fund charges (central
services) through the allocation at year-end. This is because we need to report this cost on our financial
statements.
BAC Operations Committee is meeting to come up with criteria for state enrollment counting when
using grant funds.
Colleges are supposed to be doing outreach to small businesses and provide technical assistance to
them in procurement. We are also to submit a report to the legislature every other year to tell them
how we are doing with this. First report due this past November and we did not submit one. SBCTC
intends to submit a report for 2015.
Equipment reserves held with SBCTC. Colleges need to submit for reimbursement of these funds. No
longer a reason for SBCTC to hold on to these funds for college and it causes complications with financial
statement reporting.
Central Services (Revolving Funds) invoices. Bill is paid on colleges behalf on a system level by SBCTC. At
year-end in a final allocation, SBCTC distributes the funding and the cost to the colleges so we can
record it on our books. Most of the invoices are flat fees from agencies, but some (AAG and SAOwhistleblower) are based on usage. SBCTC does not know what services we received and if the bills are
accurate. So each month, SBCTC will start sending out how much we were each billed for these services
so that we can dispute if necessary. But no change in the funding or billing process, this is just
informational.
Financial Statement Project Update. Consensus that we will prepare them annually and be audited
annually. Pilot group feels the experience of doing it every year will be more manageable. Joann sent
out a list of things colleges could do now to prepare for their upcoming financial statements to save time
later. Walla Walla is close to having an audit start and then Green River is next.
 Foundations need to be included in our financial statements because they are significant to the
college. It would be misleading to not include the foundation financial statements. We present
them separately, not blended in to the college figures.
 A question was asked about what would be the problem if we received a Qualified opinion from
the auditor on the financials? Maybe in the first year if the Pilots can’t get there, but it is not ok
for the future. The concern is having audited foundation financial statements available.
Senate Language related to an Audit of Fund 148 and Fund 149 in Fund Balance. The audit would
include 2 community colleges – one with a baccalaureate and one without. This is just a one-time audit.
Colleges selected will need to pay for the audit cost.
Megamations. The colleges who we are hearing have uploaded are on the facilities side. Their data has
been uploaded to a facilities test site for them to test their starting numbers, etc. Olympic, Edmonds,
Penninsula and Yakima are still the pilots for the finance side to make sure Megamations works for our
needs in finance. No colleges have yet tested the finance data. Joann is coming up with a list of things
that the pilots should test to make sure it works. The timeline goal is to get everyone converted before
the next waves in ctcLink, so that conversion can go from Megamations to ctcLink.
 ctcLink will do depreciation for us, will add capital asset purchases to our inventory, etc. Joann
isn’t finding anything that ctcLink will not be able to do for us itself.
 Megamations will just be for reporting buildings and things to the state.
Wrap Up & Adjourn
Our next meeting will be held at Columbia Basin May 29-30
Dates are wrong on our website so Amanda Savin will be correcting that.
Meeting adjourned at 12:30pm