Colleges Face $6.1-Million Budget Deficit

The Los Angeles Community College District is facing its worst fiscal outlook in years with eight of its nine campuses heading toward year-end deficits.

The estimate of a combined $6.1-million shortfall among the colleges, contained in a newly released report by the nation’s largest community college district, has sent some campuses scurrying to trim spending and alarmed district trustees.

“Right now, the numbers I’m seeing are as bad as I’ve ever seen in the district,” said William Norlund, acting president of Mission College in Sylmar. Though it is the district’s second-smallest school, Mission College has the largest projected loss so far this year at $1.5 million.

“We are continually expected to do more with less,” Norlund said. “It’s just getting to the point where we can’t do it anymore.”

District officials cautioned that the midyear deficit projections will probably improve as the year progresses and colleges cut costs. Yet the combined performance by the nine colleges still is headed toward its worst year-end deficit in at least five years, district figures show.

The district’s teacher contract prevents any midyear layoffs, so immediate cutbacks to classes--and other effects on students--are unlikely.

Deficits are nothing new at individual campuses, but this year’s projected shortfalls are bigger than any in recent memory. Four of the district’s colleges--Mission, Pierce in Woodland Hills, and Southwest and City colleges in Los Angeles--all have estimated deficits exceeding $1 million.

Last year about this time, the 101,800-student district had projected a combined deficit of $2.9 million for its nine campuses. But by the end of the fiscal year June 30, the amount was reduced to about $470,000.

By comparison, between 1991 and 1993, the nine campuses had combined year-end surpluses that ranged from $3 million to $6 million. And no more than one campus ran an individual year-end deficit in any of those three years, according to district records.

The district has covered the deficits of individual campuses in the past but made the schools repay the amounts. So colleges that run large or repeated deficits quickly find themselves in even greater debt.

District Chancellor Neil Yoneji blamed the looming financial problems on substantial enrollment losses, lingering impacts of the Northridge earthquake and state funding cuts, as well as the district’s lack of efficiency.

“This year is the culmination of a lot of stuff,” Yoneji said, adding: “I think we’re about to bottom out. I don’t think we’ll get any worse than this.” He also pledged that the district’s projected deficit would drop by year-end, although he acknowledged that district enrollment so far has not bounced back as much as he had hoped.

“I think it’s a guarded situation,” Yoneji said of the district’s finances in general. “We need to be very, very vigilant about it. But it’s not as if it’s a total panic or anything.”

Several campuses already have frozen hiring and new purchases, officials said.

Pierce College, facing a projected $1.4-million shortfall this year, imposed an absolute freeze on filling vacant jobs and all but critical purchasing earlier this week. And Mission College has imposed what Norlund called more selective limits on spending for now.

But some college presidents questioned the district’s estimates. Tyree Wieder, president of Valley College in Van Nuys, noted that her campus’ shortfall had fallen from $1.2 million several weeks ago to about $723,000 in the latest report.