President says CCC could face more cuts

CLOVIS — During Wednesday’s regular board meeting, Clovis Community College President Becky Rowley said while the school managed to withstand a funding reduction during the state’s special legislative session, the potential for future trimming remains.

“We did receive a 5 percent cut during the (legislative) special session a couple of months ago,” she said. “And that cut actually came in before we finished the final close out of our fiscal year. The final close on our fiscal year was even better than what we thought it was going to be, as we had some unexpected savings in there. So we were able to absorb that cut without having to adjust our budget, cut any programs or do anything like that. No budget was altered. My concern is what will happen during the next session.”

Rowley said the repercussions from funding losses have varied among schools and there has been a call to action for current level appropriations.

“I met with the Legislative Finance committee last week and my group of president’s wanted to stress what people are having to do across the state to respond to cuts we’ve already had,” she said. “There are colleges that are laying people off. What we hope is the legislature is fully aware that we’re at the point where we’re able to do what we need to do with the level of funding we have. I think it would be overly optimistic to assume they won’t cut us at all, but I’m hoping we can really keep it minimal. For the first time they were actually talking about looking at some other revenue streams besides just cutting everybody’s budget.”

Clovis Community College Chief Financial Officer John Rush said the school is financially sound.

“We will remain solvent,” he said. “We use the same guidance that many finance people do. We over estimate what we are going to spend in expenses and under estimate how much money we’ll receive in revenue. We do that purposefully, with the anticipation that when the numbers settle at the end of the fiscal year, we are in the positive. That has played to our advantage for many, many years. We are doing very OK. When you hear a finance officer say we’re doing OK, we’re OK. I’m not telling you we’re great and I’m not telling you we’re bad. We’re OK.”

In other meeting action:

• The board voted to approved a resolution and proclamation providing for the calling of a March 7, 2017, election to fill a pair of board seats. One position is for a two-year term in District 1 while the other seat is a six-year term in District 2. Laura Leal and Arnold Martinez currently serve as the trustees in those respective districts.

• The school’s Fall 2016 Graduation List was presented by Rowley and also garnered board acceptance.

“These students have been approved for graduation through our registrar’s office for this fall,” she said. “They will be permitted to walk with the spring graduating class in May, if they so choose. There are 71 Associate Degree earners, 108 Certificates of Completion and 91 Certificates of Achievement — for a total of 271 graduates. That is up from last year’s fall graduation number of 264. In the spring we had 335 graduates.”