College District OKs Budget Increase

After several years of declining budgets, the Ventura County Community College District has adopted a budget with $1.8 million in increases.

That is, if money from Sacramento is delivered as promised.

“The state has a way of projecting rosy revenues at this time of the year, but come January we usually end up with a shortfall,” college district Trustee Pete Tafoya said.

The board of trustees unanimously adopted the $61.9-million budget for the three-college, 27,000-student system at a special meeting Tuesday. The budget represents a 3.1% increase over last year.

But the bulk of the increase is expected to come from the Legislature, which is in a state of confusion over its speakership.

“Each year we seem to receive less money than the Legislature has apportioned us in the state budget,” district Budget Director Harry R. Culotta said. “And we have to go back midyear and start cutting.”

Included in this year’s budget is a scheduled 3.4% raise for academic staff and $628,000 to hire a number of part-time instructors to teach about 80 new classes.

The new classes and instructors are sorely needed, Tafoya said.

But to many, the budget still represented a severely underfunded college system.

“The physical plant is falling apart, the libraries are in bad shape . . . there are a lot of areas that could use more money,” Trustee John Tallman said. “We have all kinds of problems. It’s a real balancing act to spread the money around. We can’t do a first-class job because we don’t have the resources.”