Pierce College Panel Weighs Cost Savings

Pierce College administrators, faced with a projected $1.8-million budget shortfall, said Monday they are considering borrowing money from their students.

After an emergency meeting to discuss various cost-cutting options, a college budget committee said that money-saving measures under consideration range from delaying some hiring to--a longshot--seeking a loan from the Associated Student government.

But they’ll be lucky if they can whittle $600,000 in savings by the June 30 end of the fiscal year--leaving the college’s deficit still above $1 million.

“The cumulative effect of this is, it’s going to burden Pierce College tremendously,” said the school’s interim president, Jack Fujimoto.

“If we continue this type of ballgame,” he said, the nine-campus Los Angeles Community College District is “going to be bankrupt very soon.”

The budget committee did not make or recommend any specific cuts Monday. Instead, a smaller group of faculty members and administrators was directed to return in about two weeks with specific proposals.

No cuts in the 14,500-student instructional program are being planned, officials said, because neither permanent nor part-time faculty members can be laid off after the beginning of the semester, under the Los Angeles district’s collective bargaining agreement with its faculty.

But a college memo suggested more than $670,000 in other possible cuts, including deferring some contracts ($214,709), freezing purchases ($200,000), halting noninstructional hiring ($170,000), eliminating student worker jobs ($80,000) and cutting travel reimbursements ($7,000).

Fujimoto even suggested the college consider asking its Associated Students government organization for help. “Why can’t we get a loan?” he said.

Added Carmelita Thomas, Pierce’s acting vice president for academic affairs: “Turn off your lights, people. We have to save money.”

The college’s projected $1.8-million deficit this year amounts to 8.4% of its $21.5-million unrestricted General Fund budget. And it comes on the heels of a $1.9-million deficit the college ran last year--the largest ever for any campus ever in the Los Angeles district, officials said.

Some campus officials blamed the deficits on lingering enrollment losses from the January 1994 Northridge earthquake while others cited the campus’ large size and high ratio of full-time faculty for making it more expensive to operate than other community colleges in the Los Angeles district.

Campus officials said they had known a large deficit was looming since the start of the school year, but said that Mary Lee, the recently departed acting president, took no significant actions to stem the flood of red ink. And campus officials conceded that the deficits are beginning to strangle the campus.

Under district policy, the district covers campus deficits, but such advances must be repaid over a three-year period that begins a year later. So starting this fall and for the following two years, Pierce will begin the budgeting process about $630,000 in the hole, to repay the district for last year’s $1.9-million deficit.

Then, if this year’s eventual shortfall exceeds $1 million as expected, that would add an additional $330,000 in annual debt payments over a three-year period starting in 1997. Thus the campus would face a bill of about $1 million annually just to repay the two years of deficits--5% of its most recent budget.

The college already is laboring under other setbacks: Its accreditation was deferred last year because of various problems; Lee, its acting president since 1994, recently was passed over for the permanent job and asked to be reassigned, and the college has suffered a 22.6% enrollment drop since 1990.