District staring down cutbacks

Coast Community College District officials say they are doing everything possible to avoid cutting classes or laying off faculty members right now in response to pending cuts in state funding, but the tentative budget the board of trustee’s passed is only a stop-gap, and deeper cuts could be inevitable.

The budget relies heavily on tapping into savings from prior years and borrowing money that would ordinarily be set aside to pay for retiree health benefits.

After two straight years using financial reserves to pay the bills, though, the district’s coffers are approaching the minimum amount the state requires it to keep on hand, meaning this year’s budget balancing strategy will be impossible next year, according to Chancellor Ding-Jo Currie.

Trustee Mary Hornbuckle agrees. She thinks that using the reserve funds will likely just temporarily fend off inevitable staffing cuts — 83% of the district’s money is spent on salaries, benefits and other “people costs” — but she believes the reserves will provide a cushion so those changes can be made slowly and will have less of a sudden, shocking effect on students.

“In tough times, this is a pretty non-painful way to come up with additional funds. Most of the cuts we made are one-time monies, but they’re one-time monies available to us, so better to use those than have drastic cuts right now,” Hornbuckle said. “We’re lucky to delay it for a year and perhaps property tax will pick up a little bit, but we’re not holding our breath.”

Of the $10 million that the district is cutting out of its budget, less than half will be passed on to the individual colleges: OCC and Coastline Community College, which have campuses in Costa Mesa, and Golden West College in Huntington Beach.

A steep drop in class offerings like the district underwent in 2002-03 to deal with a budget crisis would be unacceptable this year, Currie said. But the chancellor knows there’s a strong possibility that the district’s funding will be even worse in 2010-11, so she has directed campuses to reduce class offerings slightly in 2009-10 and try to cut down on each class’ operating expenses in preparation.

“I’m asking the campuses to make sure that beyond the cuts that we will be doing, to absolutely save every penny so that we have a larger ending balance in spite of the cuts,” Currie said.

The colleges are still hashing out what that means for them. For OCC, it means 100 fewer classes offered during the summer term, according to Vice President of Administrative Services Rich Pagel.

OCC is also trying to cut down on energy costs by consolidating classes into a fewer number of buildings, not scheduling as many classes between noon and 6 p.m. when energy costs are highest and not cooling buildings.

In addition, the college’s thick booklet detailing course offerings may not be sent out in the mail to prospective students anymore. Instead, a postcard could be sent out telling people to look online for the full schedule.

The area the college is most reticent to cut is fall and spring semester instruction, Pagel said.

It’s uncertain how much money the state will provide for community colleges in 2010 and 2011, but if it’s as bad as expected then the district could have to consider putting its employees on furloughs or cutting their pay, said board President Jim Moreno. Currie says she’s aggressively going after stimulus funding and other state and federal money to shield the district from making those decisions or making deeper class cuts.

“Next year is a whole ‘nother ball game, but the projections aren’t good and the efficiencies we find this year will help us next year,” Moreno said.