College Trustees Warn of Changes Due to Cuts : Education: The board says it expects $1.3 million less in state funding. A teachers’ union official calls prediction unrealistic.

Faced with up to $1.3 million in potential state cuts for the 1994-95 school year, a majority of trustees of the Ventura County Community College District say the district may be forced to re-examine the way it delivers education.

Trustees Timothy Hirschberg and Pete Tafoya and board President Allan Jacobs said the district might have to resort to cutting classes not absolutely necessary to a student’s ability to transfer to a university or train for a vocation.

“I think it means a fundamental restructuring of the way we run the district,” Hirschberg said.

Facing similar budget worries last spring, district trustees cut 300 classes from the 1993-94 schedule, many of which were restored when more money became available later in the year.

College faculty members have said that fewer classes contributed to a more than 8% enrollment drop this year, which in turn may cause the district to lose funding in future state allocations. Faculty and trustees agree, though, that much of the enrollment drop is attributed to a state-mandated rise in student fees.

Hirschberg and Jacobs criticized the district’s preliminary budget report, released this week, as “too optimistic,” and warned that the county’s three community colleges may be facing even more severe money losses than projected.

The report predicts a loss of up to $1.3 million in state allocations due to a drop in student enrollment, in addition to a loss this spring of approximately $972,000 in property tax revenues.

For three years running, state officials have slashed the district’s spring allocation after overestimating property tax revenue projections.

This past year, in anticipation of more state revenue cuts, district trustees put $500,000 in a reserve fund. If the district’s property tax revenue loss projections are correct, they would still have to cut $472,000 from the 1993-94 budget.

Faculty and student representatives, however, dismissed the district’s projections and the trustees’ concerns as melodramatically dire and ultimately unrealistic.

“It’s the usual thing,” said Barbara Hoffman, head of the teachers’ union and a counselor at Ventura College. “They under-project income and over-project expenditures. They always say, ‘We won’t get this,’ and ‘We won’t get that,’ and most of the time, they get it all.”

Hoffman recalled last year’s budget process, when the district trustees cut 300 classes and trimmed maintenance and supplies in anticipation of deep state budget cuts. In early August, the trustees learned the district would receive $2.4 million more than expected. The district’s final budget for the 1993-94 school year was $63 million--nearly $1 million more than the previous year.

Sean Mumper, the board’s student trustee, agreed with Hoffman. “Last year the trustees said the same things,” he said.

Mumper, whose vote on the board is non-binding, said when the trustees are faced with budget losses, they are far too willing to cut from campus expenses while refusing to draw from the district’s reserves.

“These last few years, we’ve been watching the district climb out of a financial hole, and you wonder, with all these budget problems, how can they do that?” Mumper asked, referring to the district pulling itself off the state chancellor’s watch list by continuing to add to district reserves. “They might want to consider where they’re cutting all that money from. They might want to ask, ‘Whose backs are you really riding these cuts on?’ ”