Countywide : Cole Elected Leader of College Trustees

Trustees of the Ventura County Community College District on Tuesday unanimously elected Gregory P. Cole to a one-year term as president of the five-member board.

The 41-year-old Thousand Oaks dentist, who has been an outspoken trustee for three years, will lead a district with a bleak financial future.

“The district has not been financially sound for a number of years,” Cole said. “Our reserve is not large enough.”

Cole said his top priorities are to get the district on solid financial ground and to draft a long-term master plan for the district.

State budget cuts to community colleges forced trustees to trim $2 million from a proposed $64.5-million budget, and Cole said he expects that reductions in state funding will cut even deeper next fiscal year.

To avoid a budget deficit, trustees took about $500,000 from reserves this year, which reduced reserves to about $1 million.

The 32,000-student district, with campuses in Moorpark, Oxnard and Ventura, is one of five on the state community college chancellor’s “watch list” for dangerously low reserves.

Being on the list means that the district is only a step away from the state’s taking over district operations, said Jeff Marsee, vice chancellor of administrative services for Ventura County Community College District.

Cole predicted that his biggest battle in the upcoming year will be over contract negotiations with the teachers union.

Cole, who advocates freezing salaries and capping faculty health benefits, has made enemies among the ranks of the union, which helped elect him in 1989.