Earlier this month, the college’s budget was approved by the board of trustees at its meeting, Francisco Arce, vice president of academic affairs, said.
“Our budget is probably one of the best in the state,” Harold Tyler, director of student development, said. “The bond is being spent as they have construction. Our infrastructure has all been restructured. We’re also getting ready to modernize all of our buildings.”
There are three phases to the budget: preliminary budget, tentative budget and final budget; the final budget was approved.
“The preliminary budget is sort of like the bare bone basics of the budget,” Arvid Spor, dean of enrollment services, said. “By late spring, there’s something called a tentative budget. It’s a little bit more expanded and a bit more detailed. The idea behind the tentative budget is that it allows the college to have something in place for the new fiscal year.”
“The final budget shows all the different funding from revenues coming in to expenditures going out. It gives quite a bit of detail,” Spor said.
It takes about nine months for the board to receive a planned budget because the college doesn’t know how much revenues will be; they have a steady idea of what expenditures will be because they do not change.
Spor said the total budget is about half a billion dollars.
“The budget actually sounds like a lot, but most of that is bond money,” Spor said. “When you look at all the employees, we have over 2,000 employees. The salary eats up about 85 percent of the budget. The majority of the remainder of the budget goes to running the college, like lighting and water.”
The budget for the college provided by the state is going through cutbacks as evidenced by all the sections being cut.
However, the college is still building and remodeling buildings because the bond money being spent for these has nothing do with the faculty itself.
Each year the final budget is created and goes before the board of trustees to be approved by Sept. 15; the board purposely schedules a meeting for the first Tuesday after Labor Day weekend, Spor said.
“We’ve been fortunate to have a decent budget for the past couple of years and I think we’ll continue to be fine,” Tyler said.