Chancellor Search Widened Beyond District : Community colleges: Trustees will accept outside candidates. Board also told of $920,000 budget shortfall.

Moving to replace Chancellor Thomas G. Lakin, who died last month after being infected with fast-moving bacteria, Ventura Community College District trustees decided Saturday to accept candidates from inside and outside the district to serve as interim chancellor.

And in a separate announcement, trustees said at the special meeting that the district faces a shortfall of $920,000 in its $86.6-million budget as a result of the state’s overly optimistic projections of revenues from property taxes.

Board members, who were informed of the funding gap in a closed-session meeting last week, said they do not know how they will make up the shortfall. “We need to start working on it right away,” Trustee Timothy D. Hirschberg said.

In the search to replace the chancellor, the board voted unanimously to form a committee to begin looking for a permanent successor to Lakin. The committee will include five community representatives, one appointed by each trustee.

Board members said they hoped to select an interim chancellor in January and a permanent replacement in about six months. Moorpark College President James Walker was named acting interim chancellor Tuesday.

Lakin’s replacement will be charged with implementing major improvements in the district’s book-keeping practices--improvements suggested in a critical audit released last week by the district’s accountant.

Trustees, who debated the details of the chancellor search process for two hours at Saturday’s meeting, said they did not want to rush such an important decision.

“The selection of the chancellor is probably the most critical decision that the board can make,” Trustee Pete E. Tafoya said.

In letters and testimony given Saturday, students, faculty and staff almost uniformly supported looking within the district for an interim replacement. They told trustees to look for a candidate who is “people-oriented” and familiar with the district.

A motion to limit the interim search to inside candidates failed by a 3-2 vote, however, as the majority of trustees said they preferred to wait and see who applies for the job.

The most frequently made argument in favor of an inside candidate was that it would keep salary and search costs down for the financially pressed district.

The union representing classified employees at Moorpark college argued for eliminating the chancellor’s job entirely. Trustee Noman J. Nagel said the board should mull doing away with the job and its $140,000 a year compensation package, replacing the chancellor with a council of the presidents of Ventura, Oxnard, and Moorpark community colleges. The chairman of the council would rotate each year.

“It seems like an interesting and innovative idea, something that we may at least want to consider,” Nagel said.

Tafoya urged trustees to make gender and racial diversity a priority in the selection process, saying he was disappointed that staff, students and faculty had not emphasized that issue in their comments.