Monday, August 30, 1999

A typical episode: the SOCCCD in 1999—discussing the budget, pointing fingers


From ‘Vine 17, September 9, 1999

Title: 

VIGOROUS FINGER POINTAGE: MATHURIAN SHENANIGANS AT THE 8/30[/99] BOARD MEETING

1ST, VICE CHANCELLOR [Gary] POERTNER EXPRESSES DISCONTENT; HAS AN IDEA:

Wagner and Poertner, more than a decade later
[Vice Chancellor Gary] POERTNER: [We had some] conversations at various board meetings asking questions about, well, “How does the ending balance look?” We had budgeted 3.8 million. Are we going to have 3.8 million? The answer is, we have 6.3 million. So I...want to make a couple of statements about that.
            Number 1: what were the kinds of things that occurred during the year that resulted in this ending balance being larger?…There’s been some initial enrollments above what was projected in the original budget a year ago. And that brought in an additional $559,000. Lottery brought in an additional $171,000. Partnership for Excellence brought in another $104,000. Interest was $275,000 more. A part of the Orange County bankruptcy payment that went into our general fund—some of the money, by the way, went to other funds…so the general fund got an additional $315,000…[Inaudible] enrollment fees and a prior year adjustment of $1,086,000. The total of all those…is two million and seven, which, added to the 3.8, which is roughly the 6.5 million that we have in the unrestricted ending balance.
Now the point that I want to make about this is that—I’m new to your district and reporting like this is not the kind [of reporting] that I’m normally used to—waiting till the end of the year and then popping this kind of information out at a board meeting…
What I had in mind is that, every month, when one of these kinds of piece of information come along and we’re alerted to them, then we’d like to come to the board with a statement and (revise) the budget for whatever it is that occurs in that month. It may be positive and it may be negative. And it’ll be confusing to you because sometimes it’s up and sometimes it’s down…but at least what you’d have is the best information that the people in the district administration know about what’s being changed…So if we change the reporting to you and change the budget every month you’ll know at all times what the projected ending balance is and you won’t have a surprise like we were looking at this year.

[Trustee Dave] LANG: …I for one would welcome that kind of ongoing reporting and changing of the budget to update us on what’s happening…
…..
[Trustee Dorothy] FORTUNE: …We now need to recess for a public hearing on the proposed 1999-2000 final budget…Comments? [Peter M. raises his hand.]…We have a representative of a shared governance group. Mr. Morrison [IVC academic senate president], would you please go to the podium?…

P[eter]. MORRISON NOTES $4 MILLION UNDERREPORTING AND A FAILURE TO CONSULT:

P. Morrison at his retirement party,
several years ago
MORRISON: First, we were, to say the least, quite surprised to be notified of an increase in the income balance which you just heard about from an estimated 3.8 million dollars—that was reported to us last on July 19th—to the estimated 6.4 million dollars reported this evening, and actually we would have not known about that other than a chance phone call I happened to make—not to district offices, by the way.
            Although this is obviously extremely welcome news to this district and to the college, we must ask that the trustees duly appreciate the havoc this causes for any efforts at rational budget planning and timely development of the budget. It’s a very serious matter. We do understand and appreciate very much that Vice Chancellor Poertner agrees with this and, as he indicated to you, [he] is hoping to bring forth to you some recommendations for how this might be better addressed in the future, and we are very very supportive…The import of this can hardly be overstated….
Secondly, we are not only surprised but we are frankly dismayed at the process by which recommendations for the college FINAL BUDGET have been brought to you this evening—[namely,] without benefit of any consultation by any members of the faculty or the administration (inaudible) excepting, so far as we can determine, the vice presidents. Despite repeated efforts this summer on our part to secure copies of the college budget during the process of budget development—from the time you adopted a tentative budget until this evening—we have yet to receive a copy of the college budget, and we have been unsuccessful in getting any information to this effect.
We particularly want to call your attention to changes in the college budget…and among them I call your attention to a change in excess of 4 million dollars in the projected cost of academic salaries and benefits from the time you adopted a tentative budget for IVC to the final budget presented to you tonight, which occurred, not as a result of matters you might reasonably anticipate, but because the tentative budget you adopted in June excluded the salaries of hourly faculty [part timers] at the college. That’s like balancing the household budget and forgetting to include the mortgage.
            We appreciate and we are relieved that the unexpected windfall that we are suddenly facing has brought about an increase in the (inaudible) fund balance. In our particular case [at IVC]…this means we’re dealing with, suddenly, over night, an additional $870,000 that we have to (inaudible) back into the budget that we had cut out and now we have to turn around and put back in.
            Now, we do expect in this process that the [academic] senate will be involved in all phases of recommending how these monies will be restored to the budget, as we were not involved in the reduction proposed to you—and I will remind you that both Title V and the board policy delegating authority to the senates makes us [the senate] primarily responsible for the process of budget development at the colleges. We further ask the board to appreciate that, even with the increase of 1.86 million, the college will be obliged to reduce its budget in response to very large cost increases…imposed upon the college by this board.
Thank you.

FORTUNE: We are looking at item 41, the final budget. Um, President Mathur, would you like to address any of the comments that Mr. Morrison brought up?

PRESENTATION OF THE SCAPE GOAT; CONFIRMATION OF MORRISON’S CHIEF ASSERTIONS:

Mathur loved to point
a finger of blame
MATHUR: I would like to call upon the college manager to respond first—to see if she would like to respond. Beth Mueller, please?

FORTUNE: [The chancellor and various trustees speak. Chaos prevails.] Tell me, what’s the right thing to do here? [Board members fret about the legality or propriety of the proceedings.]

[IVC beancounter Beth] MUELLER: I’d like to respond to Mr. Morrison. Number 1, he is correct that it does create budget havoc when we have a pleasant surprise like this because we’ve been trying to deal with how to balance the budget with much fewer funds. It’s made it much easier at this point, knowing that we have the additional revenue.
            Second, the budget process that he was talking about—that was not complete at the time of the tentative budget. That’s correct, we did not have the, um—I think I skipped one point, but I’ll go to the part-time salaries: they were omitted. When I came to IVC, I came in the middle of May and had two weeks before the tentative budget was adopted. Many things had been put into the budget; the part-timer salaries had not. That was, I guess, done at a later date. Um, there just wasn’t enough time for somebody who was brand new, [to do it] in 2 weeks. Since then, we have recalculated; I’ve worked with the Vice President of Instruction and they’re completely funded for this year.
            As far as the budget process: I believe there were budget—I know there were budget committee meetings throughout the year by my predecessor, Judy Christensen, and when I came in, you know, I had a lot to learn and a lot to work with, plus dealing with the summer process—a lot of people gone. So I did pretty much deal with the vice president and the president in making those decisions. [I.e., no one else was consulted.]
We have our budget committee set up for the new year. It will convene in about two weeks in the middle of September. I hope to open that up to everyone, get their input from the college. I want to learn everyone’s needs and get their input so we can address those in the upcoming year. But I’ve not been there very long to absorb all of this and get the job done.

FORTUNE: OK, thank you. Any additional comments?

MATHUR POINTS A NASTY FINGER AT MORRISON/THE SENATE; OFFERS ONE OR TWO RED HERRINGS:

            MATHUR: I’d just like to add that, as you know, in the past years, we’ve had four individuals in the budget office. We started out with the budget development for 98-99—was Bob Loeffler, and he served as vice president of Business Services. Subsequent to that we had Dr. Bob Mathews, who started out as the acting VP of Business Services at IVC and then moved on to the district. At that point, we had Judith Christensen, who was the Acting (VP) of Business Services and she chaired the budget committee and was the person at the time when the budget development process started. And, subsequently, toward the end of the year came Beth Mueller that you just heard from. Judith Christensen solicited input from all the schools, from all entities of the college. All of that input was received and considered.

[NOTE: On her last day as Acting VP (4/29/99), Judy Christensen visited the IVC Academic Senate, where she acknowledged that the budget development process was going very poorly. She referred to the “vacuum” in which budget decisions seem to be made at IVC. She recommended broader input.]

 Dr. Morrison is totally wrong to suggest that the faculty input was not sought. And I want to make that very very clear. And, if anything, I’m determined to make the budget development process more open in the coming years than it has ever been. In fact, I’ve asked Dr. Morrison if he would provide to me a copy of the budget development process that’s [inaudible] been used in the past. He has (refused?) to do so. And he provided me with this document which consists of many spread sheets, but not the process. “Process” means that there will be text to it. There is no text. I’ve been misled. So we need to work in the spirit of collegiality and honesty and openness and without attacking each other, and so I’m very disappointed with his approach to all of this.
            But, again, I would just like to emphasize that we have sought faculty input and administrative input, classified staff input, through the deans, through the (inaudible), and will continue to do that and build on it to make the budget development process more participatory. To say anything to the contrary, to me, it is an irresponsible act. Thank you.
.....

LANG AND WAGNER ARE DISAPPOINTED, TROUBLED, CONCERNED ABOUT HOLES:

LANG: I guess, first off, I have to say that, obviously, I’m disappointed that the fact he feels at least that they didn’t have adequate input into the budget process this year—I think we need to make every effort to remedy the situation. And I wonder under the system you’ve described whereby you are going to report changes and perhaps revise the budget on an ongoing basis this year, if that would provide some additional time for perhaps you to get together with [the] Academic Senate, make certain that this information…we do get some feedback…and get appropriate input into the process…
I guess…we’re up against the wall….

FORTUNE: Trustee Lang, could we deal with…actually accepting or rejecting the budget?

LANG: My comments specifically relate to that—

FORTUNE: Well, you’re asking the vice chancellor to go work at IVC, and there is a president—

LANG: No, I’m expressing displeasure with the fact that this wasn’t a more participatory process—

FORTUNE: —although the president says that it was—if they wanted to participate.

LANG: I understand that…
…..
WAGNER: Where to start? I would like to also express…I am quite disappointed in some of what I’m learning tonight. It’s great to have an additional 3 1/2 million dollars, but that begs the whole process question, and I’ve gotta echo some of what Trustee Lang was saying earlier…Now I’m hearing that the tentative budget—that we were given…three months ago—for the first time we’re hearing now that the people who presented this to us, when they were giving it to us, knew that they didn’t have all the information and never told us that, and as a matter of process, I find that very troubling. You can come to me and say, “Here’s the tentative budget; there are holes in it and here are the reasons there are holes.” But I think there are serious problems when you come to me and say, “Here’s the final budget. Oh, and by the way, the reason it bears no relation to the tentative budget is because of all of these holes.” And that’s what I’m hearing, and that’s what troubles me in terms of the process…[T]here are issues that need to be addressed on an ongoing basis. I think what vice chancellor Poertner is proposing in coming with monthly [reports] may take us some steps along that way. But, in general, this board has got to be kept more informed of holes, of problems, of missing information, when the administration knows that the information is missing.

GRAPHIC: “Ratitude”

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