By Mike Abell
The budget workshop released in April answered a lot of questions though the official budget has yet to be released and is expected to be out by September. There are two budgets, one for revenue and the other is for spending. The numbers for the proposed budgets can be seen on the graphs below.
Last year enrollment decreased six percent, and this semester it is down by three percent. For every percent that enrollment drops, the budget decreases by $300,000, granted the staff who sets up the budget plans for elements such as that.
Barbara Larson, executive vice president of finance and administrative services, along with Don Perkins, associate vice president of financial services, both agreed that when they do plan out the budget they realistically look at what they did the previous year.
“Every year we take a look at spending history to determine how we’re going to budget for the subsequent year,” said Perkins, “We learned what we learned in the prior year, and that is what did we do? What did we actually do?”
Shortly after Dr. Sopcich was promoted to college president, Larson was hired as the new Executive Vice President of Finance and Administrative services. Larson said that there was a focus among executive leaders to take a hard look at expenditures the executive leaders decided to focus on taking a hard look at expenditures.
“We budgeted for enrollment to be flat last year, so we planned in terms of our tuition revenue,” said Larson. “We anticipated flat enrollment so when we say we are down by three percent we are very hopeful that it will come back up to be even.”
Both Larson and Perkins said that when enrollment is down, there won’t be as many classes to fill, but those two numbers don’t cancel each other out.
While the official budget hasn’t been released yet, there are factors that can be examined such as enrollment rates. Dr. Sopcich said that there are multiple components that could change the budget from year to year.
“In today’s world of higher education there is always a need… of how the budgets are going,” said Sopcich. “It’s so important, because sometimes as we saw our tax revenues were cut when our property evaluations went down. Sometimes the state might make a cut or if enrollment declines, so you always have to be flexible and top of it. That is the most important thing.”
Be sure to visit the thecampusledger.com in the following weeks for more info regarding the budget and enrollment.
Contact Mike Abell, editor-in-chief, at mabell@jccc.edu.