COLLEGE COUNCIL
Thursday, July 15th, 2004
2 to 3:30 p.m. – Board Room
MINUTES
Dr. Ron Taylor called the meeting to order at 2:06 p.m. He is chairing
the meeting on behalf of Dr. Carlson.
1)
Convocation Update (Melinda Matsuda): Melinda updated
the Council on the schedule of events for Convocation Week.
2)
Governance Document (Chad Mark Glen):
Shared Governance document – recent changes include an
alphabetized table of contents; calendar of governance
meetings on page 36; the goal is to have this on the Internet by
Fall Semester. The Governance Document was reviewed and
approved by the College Council.
Academic Senate could send out occasional reminders to
provide feedback or change/revisions to the document which
would then be brought before College Council for review.
3)
2004-2005 Budget (Dr. Ron Taylor): Dr. Taylor spoke about the
new budget and the current budget situations. The news from
the District is that we have a financial challenge ahead. The
question is where can we reduce the expenditures and where
can we generate new revenues to offset the balance - $1.7
million out of balance – a deficit. This is not a crisis of our own
making. It is an increase in benefits cost that the District has
and we also have increases in salaries for classified, faculty
and administration that we cannot do about – they are part of
our structure. The state has not been coming up with enough
money to do something about this. The distinction between
operational funding and capitol outlay funding - the funds are
limited to construction of buildings, improving infrastructure,
and rebuilding of campus buildings – money can be used for
equipment, but not for salaries or personnel costs. We have two
salaries: full-time/regular faculty and adjunct/part-time faculty
(we have to a prediction exercise that includes variables like
how many classes we offer in particular disciplines on a
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July 15, 2004
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semester by semester basis – a committee works on predicting
what size of schedule we need to run). We do this on a FTEF
basis and one of the frustrations is that if our estimates per FTEF
costs are as accurate as they need to be. We project a $6.6
million cost for adjunct faculty salary this year. Any savings
within this number would help ease some of the deficit – we
cannot reduce this schedule too far. For every class we
reduce, average adjunct class costs us $2,800. The state
reimburses us for the enrollment we get for the class. If we
cancel a class, it reduces the revenue for the District.
One of the positions is the Dean of Academic Services,
designed to help us with our processes within the Academic
Services office. Every area on the campus needs to look at
vacancies and do we need to hire that vacancy and fill that?
Of is there someone else who can do that work? We have three
deans’ vacancies (Applied Technology & Business, Language
Arts). We have deferred with going to announce the Dean of
Academic Services position ($100,000 cost to the college)
which will create more work and stress on the deans. Dr.
Carlson and Bob Curry and Ron and Melinda spoke about a
general overview of the budget situation – we don’t have
enough detail where it is possible to save money at this time.
We need to start now with savings. We do not think it is likely
we can find $1.7 million worth of savings and cutting back on
office supplies or on student assistant or temporary employees
(i.e., professional specialists). We have to look for big chunks
where we can cut. Once we’ve done that it is clear that Dr.
Carlson and the VP’s are going to have to present to the
District we are going to look at program reductions. Within the
next three weeks, we will do a quick look to see what options
are there for possible cuts. We will have to look at a two-year
time frame for this work/cut back – balanced budget. We will
do a careful study through this academic year and reach a
decision by end of Spring 05 what the likelihood of cutting
back that particular program. We will have to give notification
to the employees and/or shifting them to another program or
retrain them – we have to work with the unions, too, first. We
need to ensure we have done the best with the best we can
and look at the little chunks. It’s a natural inertia and we have
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July 15, 2004
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cut as much as we can, but we need to look more seriously at
looking at other areas. We need to let the managers that we
are looking for a target of $200 to $300,000 to cut back – we
want to see where we can fund this in $1,000 or $2,000 chunks.
The Community Ed program position will stay on the
organizational chart. We have Language Arts and Applied
Technology on the Board Agenda for approval.
4)
Other Business:
5)
Meeting Adjournment.
Next Meeting: Thursday, August 5 t h , 2 to 3:30 p.m., Board Room.