Did you know: The official Palomar College 2020-2012 Budget was adopted Tuesday night by the Governing Board.
The Governing Board was given the 116-page budget 72 hours before they were asked to vote on it. This is better than last year when the Governing Board was given a couple of hours, but not as good as it could be. Best practice for Governing Boards include budget workshops and time to reflect on the budget to make sure that spending aligns with the goals of the College. The good news is that the budget shows the College has a surplus budget rather than the large deficit we saw last year. There is some interesting information in the budget and we recommend you take a look. The numbers in parentheses are line items for reference.
Facts:
Spending on academic salaries (which covers many administrative positions including academic deans, the VPs of Instruction and Student Services, and the College President) fell by 4.6%. But instructional-only salaries fell by 6.7% (110000s and 130000s). Much of that had to do with retirees who were not replaced and our Part-time Faculty losing many classes.
CALSTRS contributions are lower this year for the District by about $600,000 (310000)
Health and Welfare benefit changes (340000s) for employees will save the District about $1.4 million this year. Last year the District overestimated these costs by almost $3 million.
The percentage of expenditures going to ALL salaries and benefits last year (2019/2020) turned out to be about 90.2% of revenue, NOT the 96% predicted by last year's budget and that FCMAT was so concerned about. This year it will be 89.3%. That is lower than the San Diego Community College District.
There is approximately $3.3 million in the budget for consultants and independent contractors (550000). The budget does not explain exactly who or what these were for.
There are no notations showing where steep reductions took place, such as cuts to our Arts and Library programs and Part-time Faculty, nor any acknowledgement of the many faculty retirements.
Appendix A, Summary of Contract Positions, lists contract employees’ names with their salaries. During the last Budget Committee meeting there were suggestions to redact names or replace with employee numbers, but these suggestions were ignored. Some pieces of information are known to be incorrect; VP Ligioso said that some information may be “titled” incorrectly (attached to the wrong person’s name) but the numbers are actual. We are confused as to why employees’ names are included if they are possibly being associated with amounts that belong with other employee names?
Bottom Line: Large amounts of ‘savings’ in this budget came from creative ideas brought forth by the Unions, or sadly, Faculty and Staff wallets. Dr Khan acknowledged the sacrifices and effort made by the Unions and the employees of the College during the Governing Board meeting. We hope that this translates into more willingness to work with us on fiscal matters. We also hope that this budget proves to be more accurate than the past year’s budget.