Facing a 7 percent budget cut for next year handed down by the state board, Olympic College administrators have a challenging problem to solve.
But Barbara Martin, vice president of Administration, submitted the OC Budget Committee’s recommendation to reduce the college’s budget by $500,000 next year to the Board of Trustees May 25.
“Our goal is to meet the enrollment demand that we have and we’re doing it with fewer resources,” Martin said.
The State Board of Community and Technical Colleges asked OC to cut $1,475,000 out of its annual budget. In addition, the college has $100,000 in “new obligations” according to its report, which included $54,000 for the new childcare center that is scheduled to open in January.
The committee also calculated $50,000 for inflation over the next year, bringing the total budget cut to $1,625,000.
But with a statewide increase in tuition of 7 percent at community colleges and a projected rise in enrollment, $1,125,000 will offset some of the cuts.
The college will “use attrition as a significant strategy to reduce the budget,” Martin said.
With attrition, the college elects to not fill positions once they become vacant or delays hiring to save money in salary.
This means having less staff in certain departments, which means less people will be available to do more work.
According to Martin, students will likely feel the reduced budget by making it harder to get into certain classes, longer lines and longer waitlists for classes.
But Martin said the committee put additional resources “where we think the biggest barriers are,” such as financial aid and tutoring.
“Our enrollment is as high as it’s ever been historically,” said Martin, “and we expect it to remain high for the coming year.”
This means with less money and more students, resources will be “stretched thinner” said Martin. She also said the college has been told that there will likely be additional cuts from the SBCTC. But it is not known how much future cuts will be and Martin said the state budget is not expected to have an upturn soon.
“It’s unfortunate because I think when cuts happen they effect the bottom of the stack,” said Bryan Davis, student representative on the budget committee, referring to the lower management staff that will be most affected by the budget. “It’s the people of the lower management that reach more students.”
Davis said he thought the budget committee considered the reductions fairly and “looked at both sides of the story” before making their recommendations.
Davis said the committee recommended more full-time faculty and one more full-time person in the Information Technology Department, because he said he thought it was important for students to have access to more faculty members.
But Davis said budget cuts “always have a negative impact.”
“I think that it’s another challenge,” David Mitchell, president of the college, said, adding this is the third year with no growth in the budget and increased enrollment.
Mitchell said one of the ways the college has spent conservatively is using permanent money on permanent expenses and considering how sustainable those expenses are.
“The way we’ve budgeted it has really helped us weather it,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell also said there is no current plan for an enrollment cap and he expects that as the economy improves enrollment numbers will decline, giving a much needed relief to the college’s support services.
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