*********************************************
DISCLAIMER: THIS CART FILE WAS PRODUCED FOR COMMUNICATION
ACCESS AS AN ADA ACCOMMODATION AND MAY NOT BE 100% VERBATIM. THIS IS
A DRAFT FILE AND HAS NOT BEEN PROOFREAD. IT IS SCAN-EDITED ONLY, AS
PER CART INDUSTRY STANDARDS, AND MAY CONTAIN SOME PHONETICALLY
REPRESENTED WORDS, INCORRECT SPELLINGS, TRANSMISSION ERRORS, AND
STENOTYPE SYMBOLS OR NONSENSICAL WORDS. THIS IS NOT A LEGAL DOCUMENT
AND MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED, PRIVILEGED OR CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.
THIS FILE SHALL NOT BE DISCLOSED IN ANY FORM (WRITTEN OR
ELECTRONIC) AS A VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT OR POSTED TO ANY WEBSITE OR
PUBLIC FORUM OR SHARED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE
HIRING PARTY AND/OR THE CART PROVIDER. THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL
TRANSCRIPT AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON FOR PURPOSES OF VERBATIM
CITATION.
*********************************************
June 8, 2022 Meeting of the Governing Board...
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Good evening, and welcome to the
Governing Board session on 8 June 2022. I'd like to call to order
the public hearing.
In keeping with the notice given to the general public, we are
calling to order the public hearing on the proposed notice of tax
increase relative to the truth-in-taxation requirement and the
proposed budget for the 2022/2023 fiscal year.
Mr. Silvyn, can you please take a roll call?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: I'd be glad to, Madam Chair.
Luis Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Here.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Maria Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Here.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Dr. Meredith Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Here on the phone.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Demion Clinco?
>> DEMION CLINCO: Here.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Catherine Ripley?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Here.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: All board members are present.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: For those who are able to, we will rise
and if you have a flag for the Pledge of Allegiance.
I can start that out.
(Pledge of Allegiance.)
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: I would next like to call on the
hearing on the proposed property tax increase.
During the 1996 legislative session, Arizona Revised Statute
15-1461.01 was passed with the intention to increase public awareness
of property taxes. In compliance with this statute, a
truth-in-taxation notice was published in the Arizona Daily Star on
May 24th and May 31st, 2022.
In compliance with the same statute, Pima Community College
District is holding a hearing on its intent to raise primary property
taxes on existing property. The board now asks the administration to
provide information in support of the proposed property tax increase.
After the presentation, members of the public will be invited to
comment on the proposed tax increase.
At this time, I would like to invite Dr. David Bea, our executive
vice chancellor for finance and administration, to give a brief
overview and if necessary respond to board questions. Dr. Bea?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Good evening. Can everybody see the screen?
Chairperson Ripley, members of the board, Chancellor Lambert,
colleagues and guests. It's my pleasure this evening to present to
you a brief summary of the proposed property tax levy increase for
fiscal year '23, and following this part I will also summarize the
budget after the tax information is complete.
As was mentioned just a few minutes ago by Chairperson Ripley,
the college followed the required statutes, the requirements spelled
out in statute, published the truth-in-taxation hearing notice in the
newspaper on the 24th and the 31st. Then following the different
requirements as spelled out for the truth-in-taxation process.
Just to do a real quick summary, back in May, we provided more
detail to the board both about the budget and about the tax increase.
This is a quick summary of what the impact and implications are on
the taxpayers.
If you follow the top of this, the first column here is levy
neutral or fiscal year '22. We did not increase the tax levy last
year or the year prior, so we call that levy neutral. That is there
is no tax increase to the taxpayers.
Taxable value of property in Pima County last year was about $9.7
billion. That's in hundreds. The tax rate for the current year,
that's what people are paying right now, is 1.2733, and that
generated a little bit over $123 million for the college's
operations.
Going into this current year, levy neutral, that is if we did not
increase the tax levy, the board did not decide to increase the tax
levy for the upcoming year, the college is able to assume new growth
in properties, that's new properties that hit the tax rolls, but
would keep tax rates essentially flat for properties.
The middle column represents what levy neutral is. The amount of
property grew by assessment valuation and also by new property.
The tax rate then, if we were levy neutral, would drop from
1.2733 to 1.2383. That would generate about 125, almost $125.5
million. Levy neutral, we would generate an additional $2 million
for the college's operations.
Now, what we are proposing in the truth-in-taxation property
process is this third column here, which is a 4% increase to the tax
levy. That increases the tax rate over the levy neutral from this
1.2383 to 1.2878.
That increase is for a property that's valued at $100,000 that
would be for the year an increase of just about $5, so $200,000
property would be $10 for the year. So somewhat moderate impact on
each individual parcel of property. However, it generates a
significant amount of revenue for the college, as shown here.
Property tax levy goes up to 130, almost and a half. Generates an
additional $5 million over the levy neutral amount.
In the budget, we spell out the whys and we talked with the board
at length about the justification for why to increase the tax levy
and what the budget priorities are for why we are recommending the
increase of 4 percent.
These next few slides show a little bit of perspective. Pima
College even with this increase will be still at the lower end of our
colleague institutions, as shown here in the lighter blue.
We are the fourth-lowest in the state. Then longitudinally, you
can see we do not have any secondary tax rate right now, so we are
just only levying a primary property tax rate.
You can see over time that the tax rate has actually declined
over the last number of years as assessment values have gone up and
we have stayed flat. Then with this 4% increase, there is a moderate
increase in the actual tax rate.
So with that, I will ask if the board has any questions, and if
not, then we can I guess call on the public.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you, Dr. Bea.
At this time, we are also basically opening it up to public
comment.
I don't see anyone signed up for public comment. We will have an
opportunity for discussion when we do make the motion after the
public hearing.
Speak now if there are any public commenters that we missed. I
don't see any that have signed up.
I'm not there, so Andrea, could you maybe go back to full screen?
I'm only seeing Dr. Bea's slides.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Just so you know, Chair Ripley, we don't
have any members of the public present in the room this evening.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Okay. Great. And nobody signed up for
this portion of the public comment. They signed up for some later
comments.
Okay. So if there are no comments, I would like to move on to
the next topic. Again, we will have a chance for discussion by board
members in the next session.
The next part of this discussion is hearing on the proposed
budget. At last month's meeting of the Governing Board, staff
presented a comprehensive review of the proposed fiscal year
2022/2023 budget. Following discussion, the board directed that the
proposed fiscal year 2022/2023 budget be formally presented for
consideration by the residents and taxpayers of the Pima Community
College District.
This has now been accomplished in accordance with state law by
publishing the proposed budget and a notice of this evening's public
hearing in the Arizona Daily Star on May 24 and May 31, 2022. The
board would like to ask the administration to give a brief overview
of the budget, and after the presentation, we will invite the public
for comments as well.
Dr. Bea, again, as executive vice chancellor in finance, please
give us a brief overview of the budget.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I'd be happy to. Thank you.
As we discussed in the May meeting when we go through the budget,
proposed budget, in a great deal more detail, I will summarize
tonight the information related to the budget.
As we have talked about, the way that the state budget process
works is that we set in a formal process and the adoption process the
maximum amount that the college can spend in any given year.
The college, if expenditures go down, if enrollment goes down, if
other things go down and we reduce expenses during the year, that's
okay. We just can't spend above the amount that we have indicated in
the state budget forms.
As you know, our priority in this upcoming year is really to
focus on employee compensation. We have gone through a number of
years, beginning actually about 10 years now where there have been
state budget reductions and then limitations related to expenditure
limitation that have really constrained the college's ability to
emphasize compensation adjustments for employees.
Over time, and we will talk more at length in the regular board
meeting with the proposal for the class and comp study, what's
happened is our compensation structure over time has really degraded
and has become archaic. What we have done as a two-year process to
really review and scrutinize our compensation program, tie our jobs
and positions to market to ensure that we are compensating employees
appropriately for the work they are providing at the college.
So the priorities within the budget are to implement the class
comp study, to also recognize our adjunct faculty and how critical
they are for the education we provide to the community by creating a
tier structure that is also proposed and will be discussed later on
in the regular board meeting, and then having a minimum adjustment
for those employees, those regular employees who aren't getting
placed up higher in recognition of high inflation rates that we are
all experiencing now and have been recently.
Then lastly, the big investment other than operational
adjustments for compensation are really continuing to build out our
Centers of Excellence projects, many of which are funded out of
revenue bonds, and then also funded through college reserves and
money we have accumulated over time through sort of judicious
stewardship of our funds.
Those are the priorities of the budget. We included a moderate
increase and the board approved it back in March a $2 tuition
increase. That was to continue a number of key programs that started
up during the pandemic, really availing students with laptops, and
students who need it and didn't otherwise have technology can borrow
laptops, hotspots, those kinds of things. We want to continue that
program that initially was funded out of federal dollars, and a
number of other technology-based programs that we're providing to
students, increasing the tuition a little bit to cover some of the
costs associated with that.
We've just talked about the increase to the property taxes, and
then there are some increases to the revenues related to STEM
appropriations. The state budget hasn't been finalized yet, so we
have moderate increases in there for what we expect might happen.
Some estimates for what we will get in Prop 207 money. The
biggest change to the budget that you can see in the summaries is the
reduction of federal dollars coming in from grants, because the
higher ed relief funds, as part of the pandemic relief federal
programs, is now concluding. Now that's falling off of our budget.
So the federal funding did a very nice job of helping sustain us
during a very difficult time, but now that federal money is going
away and we have to absorb that within our own resource structure.
As I mentioned last month, the budget has about $9 million set
aside for the class comp adjustments. That's a significant increase.
About 7 million of that is allocated now according to the class comp
recommendation.
The remainder of that is having a little bit of money for
contingency, for if there are additional increases that come out of
the class comp adjustments, and then the fringe benefit costs
associated with that, because if you pay people more, you have to
also pay for the retirement and you have to pay for the Social
Security taxes, et cetera, et cetera. And then we already talked
about the other priorities there.
Again, we went through this in the May board meeting. The
proposed budget is actually a pretty significant reduction from
$410.8 million down to 363. That's because we are starting to
conclude some of our capital projects and reducing down. That will
continue to decline in the next year or two, but it will still stay
high in terms of some of the capital investments because we do have
ongoing projects going on.
Then the other big change year over year is again the reduction
here in the orange section in the grants contracts and financial aid,
because that's the reduction of the higher ed relief funds from year
over year.
Lastly, this shows how the expenditures are broken out. Just to
remind the board, I mentioned this at the May meeting, is that this
reserve line in the proposed budget currently has the reserve money
for the class comp structure, that once that's approved then we will
allocate those monies out to the specific categories. That's why you
will see the faculty, for example, is going down, but once the class
comp study, if the board approves that, the reserve money will go in
there, and actual expenses, those will go up. Same with staff and
administrator salaries as well.
That said, that is a quick-and-dirty summary of the budget. The
state forms have been posted, as required by statute, and we have
gone through them with the board and I will ask if the board has any
questions of me.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you so much, Dr. Bea, for that
presentation.
At this time we are actually welcoming public comments, and I
believe there is one person who signed up, and I'm not sure if they
signed up for the regular meeting or actually to address the budget.
Mr. James Hart, are you on the line? Mr. James Hart, would you
like to make your comments now if it's in reference to the budget?
Perhaps he was signed up for the regular meeting. It was a
little unclear. If not, there were no other people signed up for
this portion of it. Yes?
Okay. If not, if no other public comments, we will have a very,
very brief 30-second recess. We will adjourn this portion of the
public hearing, and we will reconvene in a few seconds, the special
meeting to consider these two motions.
So gather your thoughts. Thank you.
(Recess.)
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: All right. Without further ado, I now
call the special meeting to order.
Having notified the public and conducted the truth-in-taxation
hearing, do I have a motion to approve Pima Community College
District's property tax rates and levies for fiscal year 2023? Do I
hear a motion?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: So moved.
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Second.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: We have a motion by Board Member Clinco
and a second by Board Member Hay.
With that, I would like to open up for discussion by board
members. Any discussion? I'm looking at the screen. Hopefully I
can see you all.
I don't see any hands up for discussion. Please correct me if
I'm wrong and speak up.
Without any discussion, I would like to ask Dr. Silvyn to take a
roll call vote on this motion.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Thank you, Chair Ripley.
Mr. Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: No on the tax increase. No.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: No.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Dr. Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Mr. Clinco?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Ripley?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes.
Thank you, Mr. Silvyn. With that, the motion passes, 3 yeses and
2 nos. We will move on to the next item.
Having met the requirements prescribed by state law for the
review of the college's proposed budget, do I have a motion to
approve the proposed budget for Pima Community College District for
the fiscal year July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023?
Do I hear a motion?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: So moved.
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Second.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Moved and seconded.
I now would like to open this up for discussion.
Any discussions? Without any request for discussion, Mr. Silvyn,
would you please conduct a roll call vote?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Thank you, Chair Ripley.
Mr. Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: I know the last time I said no, and I will
continue to say no, because I saw some items that I think should have
been not set there in reference to -- as I mentioned the last time,
there is a lot of inflation as well now. I think it's not the right
time for certain -- not all the items, but certain items that I don't
agree with.
My motion is still no.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Although I disagree with some of the items
on the agenda, I'm going to vote yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Dr. Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Mr. Clinco?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Ripley?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes.
Thank you. The motion passes 4 to 1. This concludes -- thank
you very much for everyone's patience and everyone's due diligence in
doing their own research. Thank you, Dr. Bea, for all your
explanations.
With that, I'd like to conclude, adjourn this special meeting,
and we will take another 30-second to one-minute recess and reconvene
for the regular board meeting. Thank you very much.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Excuse me, Madam Chair, if I might.
So the regular meeting was scheduled to start at 5:30. I have
that it's 5:25. So perhaps we ought to take a five-minute recess so
start to coincide with the time in the notice.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Great. Thank you very much. This has
got to be a record that we actually ended something early.
We will come back in five minutes. Thank you very much,
everybody.
(Five-minute recess.)
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Good evening, and welcome back to the
June 8, 2022 regular Governing Board session for the Pima Community
College Governing Board meeting, our last for the school year until
we reconvene in September.
I'm happy to be here. I'd like to call to order this regular
Governing Board meeting at this time.
The first item on our agenda is the consent agenda. The consent
agenda is published, and board members had the privilege of having a
lot of this information about 10 years ago.
Do I hear a motion to pass the consent agenda?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: So moved.
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Second.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Garcia, did you still want to move an
item?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: (Off mic.)
I'm sorry. I'd like to pull 8.32 off for a discussion, please.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: 8.32. I see an 8.3. I don't see an
8.32. Oh, I see it here. It's not in the right order.
Delegating authority to execute a contract for Construction
Manager at Risk, construction services for development of the
Downtown Campus.
Do we make a motion to remove that?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: No, so we don't need a motion. What we do
is if there aren't any other items, move the consent agenda minus
that one item, and then we will address that item during action
items. And it could be either at the beginning or the end or
wherever is deemed most convenient.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I think also in addition, Luis, did you
want 8.26?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: The 8.26, I just wanted a clarification or
more update in reference to what's there, reference to the
Foundation.
As I read it, is it 600,000 per year or 600,000 for the three
years?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: That's per year.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Per year?
I want to pull that for discussion. I did read it, and it said
in reference to the board documents there is the amount for 2022, we
have 13.65, and I saw that the Foundation provided $350,000 in
scholarship.
But that's one of the questions that I had. We can do that in
discussion. Thank you.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Chairwoman Ripley? I have a clarifying
point. So I actually have a procedural question.
Mr. Silvyn, we have an active motion that's already moved to
approve the consent agenda. There was a second. And then after that
came these requests to pull items.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: So in fairness, Ms. Garcia had asked me
about that before that discussion started. Sort of in the interest
of having everyone's interests addressed --
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: So do we need to amend? Do I, as the
motion maker, need to make an amendment to the motion?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Typically you don't need to have motions to
pull items from the consent agenda. If you think it would help to
clarify what exactly the board is voting on, we certainly can take
that opportunity.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: At this time we had a motion and a
second, so do we open it up for discussion first and then take the
vote so we might be able to clarify those two points more? Is that
the procedure?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Well, to clarify, there is no discussion on
a motion to approve the consent agenda. Two board members have asked
for two items to be moved from the consent agenda.
Mr. Clinco has raised a question about the timing of that,
although like I said, my explanation for that is in fairness
Ms. Garcia asked me about that right before we went to that.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: I will just make it easier. I will amend
my motion to approve the consent agenda with the withdrawal of the
two items to be considered.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Do I hear a second?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Is it okay with the second, or the
amendment?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Yes. That's fine. That's just fine.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: The motion is to approve the consent
agenda with the exception of the removal of items 8.26 and 8.32.
Mr. Silvyn, would you please conduct a roll call vote?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: I'm happy to do that. We don't need to do a
roll call vote, but I'm happy to do that for this item if you'd like.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: I think it was one of the suggestions
since we are on Zoom and it makes it more clear who is voting for
what.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Okay. I'm happy to do that. I just wanted
to raise that because for the tax and the budget issue, that's
actually required that we do a roll call vote, this is not, but for
clarity's sake, it's perfectly appropriate.
Mr. Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Dr. Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Mr. Clinco?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Ripley?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes.
The motion passes unanimously, so we will discuss the two
extracted items at a future date.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: So to clarify, we would discuss those items
as part of the next section of the agenda, action items. So
typically we either take those at the very beginning or we could take
them as the last items in that section.
You could either do it before 9.1 or after 9.3.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Got it. Let's do it in the beginning,
unless anyone objects, since it's fresh in our minds.
So the next item on the agenda are the action items. Action item
No. 1, discussion on item, consent agenda item 8.26, Pima Community
College Foundation services agreement.
Do I hear a motion to pass this action item? First of all.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: I would move the recommendation as printed
in the agenda.
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Second.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Now I open this up for discussion.
Board Member Gonzales, you had questions on this, 8.26. Would
you like to begin the discussion or ask questions of our staff?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: As I mentioned, clarify and correct me if
it's correct or not, but the Foundation is separate from Pima
Community College, correct?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Yes. So the Foundation is a separate
Arizona not-for-profit corporation.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: As I read the board documents, I read, as
I mentioned right now, up to the 2022, we have the amount of 3.65
million. My question was I saw that also the Foundation provided
350,000 in scholarship to our students.
Is that on a yearly basis? The scholarships.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Can I interrupt? This has been a topic
that I have been discussing and researching a lot, and got a nice
quick overview from the chancellor.
Chancellor, can you please give us a quick overview on what those
costs are and where those monies go to? Thank you.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Yes, Chair Ripley and Board Member Gonzales,
I will do my best to outline the broad sketches. I also have Marcy
Euler, the president of the Foundation with us tonight, and she'd be
glad to kind of delve a little bit deeper.
As noted in the report here, the Foundation has grown its assets
by twofold since 2018. As you have seen, we have brought in
significant dollars over the last few years, some of which goes to
scholarships. So I think that's an important part of this is to
understand that not all of it goes to scholarships, but some of it,
much of it does go to scholarships.
That fluctuates from year to year, depending upon performance of
the funds and how the funds are designated. Some funds are
designated in endowments. Then depending upon how much is generated
in those endowments, how much are available for scholarships.
Others are just direct gifts for scholarships. Again, this is
just going to vary. Hopefully that answers your question, Board
Member Gonzales, that that number is going to vary.
Marcy? Do you want to add to that?
>> MARCY EULER: Yes, thank you, Chancellor. Thank you, Chair
Ripley, members of the Board of Governors, guests.
The Foundation, we manage assets that are both permanently
restricted and temporarily restricted. That 13, $14 million is more
than just our endowments.
Our endowments we spent this year at approximately the 3% level,
and so while we have approximately $7 million in permanently endowed
funds, we cannot spend that amount of money.
The program funds and other scholarships that we have that we
have the privilege of spending down to zero, those are things that
the college requests from us. When those are requested from us, we
will pay those funds out to a vendor, to the college itself, based on
what the request and that the use and purpose is allowable under our
guidelines.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you, Marcy. Thank you,
Chancellor, for that.
I think from a board member's perspective, when I was researching
the Foundation months ago and got to know the members of the
Foundation, it helps to know the bigger picture, as they bring in
literally millions of dollars to this school, and without which I
don't know how we would have gotten even through COVID, it's
literally, you can see the numbers, they are available.
The $600,000 amount that you see here in the contract, those are
operating funds. So again, like what Marcy said, all of the millions
of dollars that they bring in go to us.
It's a nonprofit. So it's to keep them operating, and it's a
fraction of what the amount is that they actually bring into this
school. When you look at it in that aspect, the Foundation is vital
to our operations and for in fact our existence in many cases of
crisis.
I don't know if that helps any, Board Member Gonzales, or if you
have any other questions.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Yes, not really, but I just wanted to make
a comment, as the clarification reference to the 600,000 per year,
that the Pima College provides I think is great, but what I want to
see, or I don't know if we can, I saw Chancellor Lambert elaborate in
reference to the Foundation, but the check and balance, if we are
providing 600,000 and we are only providing 350,000 in scholarship, I
think with the abundance that we have, I think maybe we should
increase that.
Because the need is out there for all students. I think we
really want to support, in reference to student success, I think
maybe we should increase that and we could look at that, as well,
too.
But I think it's -- I saw the contributions from our prior
donors. I think it's great. But also, I think it's great that we
provide part of that share to the students in reference to student
support.
Thank you.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Marcy, did you want to respond to that?
I think there is a little bit of miscommunication there.
>> MARCY EULER: I think Demion has his hand up first.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: I'm sorry, yes. Board Member Clinco.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you very much, Chairwoman Ripley.
I just want to first acknowledge the Foundation and the
Foundation board for a really tremendous job. A number of years ago,
a plan was brought to the board about how we could make strategic
investments into the Foundation to help realign and redefine and grow
their capacity.
What we saw and what we have seen is significant gifts. You
know, I just want to note the extraordinary generosity of the Brown
Family Foundation and the work that the chancellor and the Foundation
did to secure that $2.5 million gift.
Additionally, the Connie Hillman Challenge Grant Match Fund,
which is a two-to-one match for $5 million which will result in a $15
million gain to the college.
All of this work is really again because of the strategic
investment that we have made into the Foundation and the Foundation's
realignment with the mission priorities of the college.
So, you know, part of the reality is that different funds are
given in different ways. The money given from Brown Family
Foundation goes to programming where restricted funds that are in our
endowment can be given for specific type of scholarships, but it is
restricted based on stewardship of those dollars as an endowment.
So we can't spend down the endowment because only a small
percentage of the earned income from that money is able to go to
those investments. But as we grow it over time, we will be able to
make larger and larger grants to students for scholarships.
And I think that that's really the key part to remember, that
ultimately this investment is helping the Foundation serve the
mission of the institution by providing external resources in a way
that we hadn't had as really recently as five years ago in this
robust way.
I just really want to acknowledge the incredible work of Ms.
Euler and her remarkable board who are pounding the pavement and
working so hard, and her tireless staff work so hard to make that
possible.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you.
Marcy, did you have something else to add to that?
>> MARCY EULER: Thank you so much. We appreciate that. We do
work very hard on behalf of the college and the students and the
different departments.
What was just explained is kind of that key piece. We are bound
by what the donor gives us the money for. So therefore, we can't
just change how much we give or who we give to. We have to follow
the donor instruction. And so while we manage resources that are
large, we have to do it based on what the donor expectation is.
So we take that responsibility very seriously. The $350,000 in
scholarships is a portion of what we have spent, because we have
spent a large sum in other programmattic areas that support Applied
Technology and hospitality and athletics and academic programs, the
Aztec Resource Center, student emergency funds. All of these things
that are not considered scholarship dollars are also part of our
spending.
We are considered a component unit of the college for the audit
that is done annually. So you will see what the college does and
what the Foundation does in terms of the big audit that Pima
Community College puts through. We will continue to have that
transparency (coughing).
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Take a minute, Marcy. I think she
needs to get a drink of water.
Yeah, so with that said, and I always beat this drum, but
community colleges have three sources of funding, and that's property
taxes, state funding, and tuition. In our case, we get zero state
funding. We all know the reasons for that. Without the Foundation,
we would have to make some very, very serious decisions and cutbacks.
Any other discussion on this action item before we go to vote?
Any questions?
Mr. Gonzales, did that answer some of your questions?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Yes, I got the clarification that I
needed. I think it's good. Like I mentioned, I just needed
clarification in reference to what was there.
I saw the both extremes, but I think as mentioned, I know there
is a lot of sums that were expended, but I think I got the
information that I needed. I will leave it for next time.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Great. Again, we are very grateful for
the Foundation.
At this point in time, I would like to call for, again, a roll
call vote because we are in this hybrid situation on this action
item.
Mr. Silvyn, can you take a roll call vote, please?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Certainly, Madam Chair.
Mr. Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Dr. Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Mr. Clinco?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Ripley?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes. With that, the action item
passes.
Next action item, back to 8.32, delegating authority to execute a
contract for Construction Manager at Risk, construction services for
development of the Downtown Campus hotel properties.
Do I hear a motion to pass this action item?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: So moved.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I thought we were going to have a
discussion.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: We are.
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Second.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: We have a motion and a second.
Now I open it up to discussion. Any discussion or questions?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Okay.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes, Board Member Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Chairperson Ripley, my question on this, on
this item here, we are authorizing to go ahead with the contract, it
says Manager at Risk Construction, but in reality is this to go ahead
and proceed with constructing of the facilities or repurposing the
hotels?
Because originally we were going to get somebody to come in and
do some kind of an assessment from the last meeting that we had. Am
I wrong?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: I would turn to Chancellor. Can you
answer this?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Board Member Ripley, Board Member Garcia, I
have with us Brandye who will be glad to answer that question for
you, Board Member Garcia.
Go ahead, Brandye.
>> BRANDYE: Chair Ripley, board members. Hello, Chancellor
Lambert. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to answer this
question.
Last month we approved the ability to negotiate an agreement with
the architect who will be working with us on the programming of this
hotel property.
In the process of that programming, what we'd like to do and what
we are proposing with this agreement is to also engage a Construction
Manager at Risk who will participate with us in preconstruction
services portion of their agreement, which will allow us to have
another member of our construction community collaborate with us on
this project so that we have the perspective of somebody who is a
builder, understands estimates, understands procurement issues that
are ongoing right now, those kinds of things. It gives us that
insight as we develop our programming, our schedule, and our budget.
This contract is asking for that collaboration.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Thank you so much. But the other part is
that it says the total costs are expected to exceed, is that
10,500,000?
>> BRANDYE: The costs on the contract identified have not been
negotiated yet. But it's a cost that represents a range that could
occur for this project.
Again, until we do the programming, we won't have the exact
number for -- that's kind of a template contract that we put out
there so that the Construction Managers at Risk could have a fair
understanding of what the range of this project might entail.
However, until this project is negotiated, we won't have an exact
number there. You see a number that just gives us an idea of what it
might do. But without the programming and without this initial
preconstruction stage, we don't have that full understanding yet.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you. Any other discussion or
questions?
With the motion, second, discussion, Mr. Silvyn, will you please
take a roll call vote on this action item?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Yes. Mr. Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Let me say something before my vote.
The properties that we are looking at were pretty much condemned
by the City of Tucson. There were three properties in that same
situation.
My question I just want to share with the public, how many
millions of dollars now, we are looking at 10.5 before me, required
to renovate these hotels. This was not in the PCC most recent
educational master plans; yet it appears to continue the preservation
efforts at the taxpayers' expense.
I will have to say no. As I mentioned before, I think it's not a
good investment. I think the investment that we need is more student
success for our students.
$3.5 million is only a starting point. I have no idea how long,
how much it's going to raise or how much more we are going to expend.
I'm telling the public, I don't think it's a good investment. Invest
in our students.
Thank you. Vote is no, yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: No.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Dr. Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Mr. Clinco?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Ripley?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes. The motion passes. I couldn't
really hear the first vote. It was a yes or a no?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: The first vote by Mr. Gonzales was no.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: So the vote passes 3 to 2.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Point of order, Chair Ripley.
If you could please ask the members of the board to engage, if
they are going to have a substantive conversation, I think in the
discussion period would be a better time to do that so we can create
a response and a communication.
I think it's a little difficult to have meaningful conversation
when that opportunity isn't taken.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you for that point of order.
Actually, it is. In all fairness to everybody on the board, the
place to have the discussions and comments is in the discussion
period. Once we are at the vote, we should just merely be voting.
So the discussion needs to happen during the discussion period.
If you could please observe that in respect for the other board
members, that would be great going forward as we go through these
final three action items. Thank you.
The next action item is 9.1, adjunct faculty tier system.
Chancellor, would you like to comment?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Do you want to call for a motion first?
Usually we do a motion, second, and then discussion.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Sorry. I'm trying to speed this up,
man. (Laughter.) Trying to speed it all up.
So do I hear a motion to pass action item 9.1, adjunct faculty
tier system?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Point of order, just for clarification,
could our legal counsel just read the recommendation for the record?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes, please. Thank you.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Item 9.1, adjunct faculty tier system. The
chancellor recommends the Governing Board authorize the chancellor or
designee to create and implement an adjunct faculty tier system.
The details are in the board report.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you for that description.
Do I hear a motion to pass action item 9.1?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: So moved.
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Second.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Movement and second. I open it up to
discussion. Any discussion by board members? Or I would like to
actually, before we have discussion, if you can provide a brief
description and description basically, Chancellor Lambert, of what
this actually means.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: So Madam Chair, thank you. I'm very
pleased, we are very pleased that we have been able to sit down with
our adjunct faculty leadership and work out a more fair and equitable
compensation system for a group of individuals who give a lot of
their time and effort at little compensation to do almost half of
what we do for our students in terms of the teaching and learning
components of the college.
So I'm pleased that we've gotten this far. I will ask Dr. Dave
Bea to provide more of the technical pieces since he was more
involved in developing the tiered system.
Dave?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Good evening again, Chairperson Ripley,
members of the board, colleagues and guests.
As Lee just mentioned, we have been working on this kind of a
structure for some time to recognize the value of our adjunct faculty
employees.
In the course of the last year or so, in particular -- the
conversation has been going on for longer than a year -- but in
earnest, we have been working with representatives from the adjunct
faculty group on developing a program that would recognize adjunct
faculty who have been with the college for some period of time and
have taught a certain number of classes.
What we have structured is a program where there will be two
tiers of faculty. There will be faculty who are relatively new to
the college, working and teaching the courses at one adjunct faculty
rate, and those who qualify for the second criteria would be working
at a higher rate of pay.
Those rates are part of the compensation proposal that's a little
bit later, but just to give some context right now, adjunct faculty,
no matter how experienced they are at the college, are making $870
per credit hour. The recommendation is to lift them to, the base
tier 1 will be lifted 3.4% to $900 per credit hour. Then those who
qualify for tier 2 would get another 5% on top of that, so $945.
The criteria that were identified to differentiate between tier 1
and tier 2 faculty is essentially that faculty who have taught five
terms or 30 credit hours in the last three years, and have completed
nine hours of a particular college-directed professional development
training. These are faculty who have gone through certain training,
and we are confident that they are experienced in teaching these
classes for the college and it recognizes that value to the college.
That's essentially what the structure is.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you for that.
I open it up for discussion or questions by our board members.
I'd like to make a comment. I think that Sean Mendoza has been
doing a fabulous job representing the adjunct professors and adjunct
faculty. Arguably, the American Federation of Teachers president
recently said adjunct professors are the backbone of community
colleges. Indeed, we couldn't do what we do without these adjunct
professors and they are pretty phenomenal.
I, for one, think anything we can do to help out, I would
definitely be in favor of this action item.
Any other discussion points? Yes, Board Member Clinco?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you. I just want to really, first,
thank all of the adjunct faculty who work so hard year in, year out,
to produce just such a high-quality educational offering for our
community.
I want to really thank Dr. Bea and his team and Chancellor
Lambert. You know, this is something that I have been talking about
and wanting to see happen for the last five years. So I'm really
glad that as part of this sort of re-evaluation and class comp study
that we were able to include this.
I think it's important. Frankly, I wish we were doing more, but
I think it's a good start. I'm really glad to support this.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you so much. I might add, Sean
Mendoza and his crew have been amazing spokespeople and doing so
humbly and with great grace. They have been very gracious.
With that said, any other comments? If not, I would like to open
this up for the roll call vote. Mr. Silvyn, can you take a roll call
vote on this motion?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Yes, Madam Chair. I'd be glad to.
Mr. Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Dr. Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Mr. Clinco?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Ripley?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes.
Thank you. The motion passes unanimously, and we will go on to
the next item, compensation and classification recommendations and
new compensation structure.
Mr. Silvyn, could you please read the full description of this
action item.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: So item 9.2 is the compensation and
classification recommendations. The chancellor recommends the
Governing Board accept the recommendations of the classification and
compensation study and implement a new compensation structure for
salary administration.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Do I hear a motion to pass this action
item, 9.2?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: So moved.
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Second.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: I now open this up actually for further
-- I think there needs to be some further description and discussion
by the chancellor on exactly and precisely what the class comp study
provided for us.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Yes, Chair Ripley. Again, I'm so excited we
have finally been able to get to this point.
As you know, we were faced with some strong headwinds around our
financials, really placed us in a difficult position to be able to do
more for our employees.
But as things started to turn a little more favorable, it timed
nicely with us being able to launch a class comp study to bring in
market, very objective, more reasonable basis for how we compensate
our employees for the great work they do going forward.
So I'm pleased to have Dr. Bea talk about this. Before I do
that, I want to acknowledge on the earlier item that the provost and
her team also played a very critical role in helping to advance the
faculty, to your piece.
Dolores and team, thank you.
Dave? Turn it over to you.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Sorry. I'm in the process of trying to get my
screen up.
Thanks again, and it is again my pleasure to speak with the board
tonight related to the class comp and budget and all things financial
and so forth related to fiscal year 2023.
We have provided the board in the board packet and with the
attached agenda items a significant amount of information. I will go
through a fair amount of it today, but a bunch of that information is
really more for just to get the context and some of the details that
we don't need to really talk through here but just to give some
context about some of the details that are actually involved in this
project.
So as I mentioned a little bit earlier, the purpose of our
compensation structure or any organizational compensation structure
is really to ensure that employees are properly paid for the value
they provide to the organization.
There's an important part for us which is that we want to be able
to recruit and retain the talent that we need to do the work of the
college.
So what we did is undertook a study that is to create structures
that are aligned to market-based pay to ensure that we are paying
people appropriately. The second piece to it is recognizing the
value that the individual employees provide to the college.
Anyone who has listened to me in the steering committees, I often
use the reference point of day one, when you work for the college,
you walk in the door and aren't even sure where your office is or you
have keys, that sort of thing. And increasingly from day one,
throughout the tenure of the college, there is an increasing
knowledge base and experience base with how to perform the duties
required in your job and we want to be able to recognize that value
to the college.
Then lastly, we want structures that ensure fair and equitable
pay.
I have talked with the board a couple of times in recent past
about the way that the current structure is set up, how some of the
adjustments happen, but I want to focus more on what we are proposing
and going forward.
Ultimately this is about solving a pretty big problem at the
college. The current structure is about 22 years old. As you can
imagine, in the last 22 years, positions have changed, job duties
have changed, obviously technology is a key component to many jobs,
and that has an effect on the college's compensation structure. The
jobs and schedules that we have have not been routinely, as a whole,
adjusted to the market.
They have been adjusted for COLA-type adjustments where the
scales have been lifted and some things have happened in terms of how
the old structure was set up. But over time, the effectiveness of
the schedule and the way that the system works has degraded.
One of the consequences of that is that there is salary inversion
can happen where, in order to hire somebody to do a job, we hire them
in at a higher rate of pay than what some of the current employees
might be making. As you can imagine, that isn't a great practice, so
we are looking at a structure that's going to help with that problem.
Then moving down the list a little bit more on some of the other
problems, in the last ten years, as I alluded to, the resource
limitations at the college have really put a constraint on what the
college can do in terms of compensation. We have been limited in
terms of what our salary pool increases can be. We have had a
suspension of the Step Progression program that existed previously.
As a result, there is salary compression. I will show the chart
and I have shown you this before, but I think this summarizes the
problems almost in a nutshell in one slide.
Then lastly, there has been, it's been limited in terms of how
able we have been to recognize the value the individual employees
contribute to the college. The board has also mentioned an interest
in having performance-based pay adjustments and recognition of
high-performing employees in particular and having the ability to do
that. So we are folding that in and I will mention that a little bit
later on.
To summarize again, this is the chart that, to me, summarizes a
majority of our problems all in one chart. What this shows is our
current structure, which is a step-based structure with step 1 being
on the far left-hand column being the minimum of a grade that someone
is hired at and paid at.
As you can see, we have a huge compression problem, particularly
nonexempt employees. 65% of our nonexempt employees are currently at
the minimum of their grade. 45% of our exempt employees are at the
minimum of their grade. And similarly a high amount of
administrators are at the minimum of the grade. That's regardless of
how many years of experience they have. So that's what's called
compression.
Faculty also have compression. For faculty it's at step 6, and
that's because faculty can be hired up to step 6 and then we have a
process by which faculty, when they get years of experience at the
college, in order to avoid inversion for faculty positions, in order
to avoid that for faculty positions, we have a process by which they
can move up to step 6 at this point.
So they have a compression cluster at step 6. Our staff
employees are clustered at step 1. That summarizes the biggest part
of the problem with the current structure.
As you know, we have been working on this for about two years
now. The college hired an expert firm, a nationally recognized firm
that works with higher education and other organizations in salary
structures and schedules. Brought them in to conduct work with the
college to review our processes, to review our positions, to conduct
a survey where people identified what job duties they do.
Then that firm worked to help classify positions, create
structures where there are job categories that make more sense for
what the college's needs are going forward. Then recommended salary
scales to come out of that.
One of the things that is important in that is setting up a
structure, and I will talk about the staff side, talking about staff,
I was just talking about that. So they have identified 255 different
job descriptions with specific duties and responsibilities.
There is 25 job families, 11 job levels. Again, in the later
part of the presentation there is additional information that sort of
shows what that looks like for some specific examples.
It consolidated for staff and administrator positions into one
salary table with 12 grades. You will see when I show you what the
current structures look like and the proposed structures look like,
and visually even they make more sense.
This is a broader-band structure, so it consolidates the number
of grades that we have, but it's a broader range of pay within those
grades.
One thing we are particularly proud of within this is that the
minimum wage, our starting regular position, moves up to $16.15 for
our regular staff positions. That's over -- right now we have this,
currently it's $15 is the starting point for regular staff positions.
So this moves that up pretty significantly.
Here is what the current staff structure looks like. As I
mentioned, there are a lot of different grades between nonexempt,
exempt, and then administrator positions. You can see that they
aren't linear and that they are pretty small.
This next slide is actually to the same scale but shows just how
much more they are broadbanded, right, and that they have more of a
consistent structure to them with the changes between the different
grades.
Importantly and what the line means in these is that each of
these grades is aligned to the market median for these positions, so
again, what they did is they identified jobs, Segal identified the
jobs, and based on the duties performed, and then identified jobs
that are consistent with those that are out in the market. Then tied
those to market comparisons. Then set up these grade scales.
These grade scales are based on market medians for parallel-type
jobs. Sometimes those jobs are national, like administrator jobs
would be based on more of a national sample. Locally or if a job is
either local or has a more competitive base in terms of like
information technology jobs exist in lots of different fields, so
then the market comparisons are a little bit broader in range with
the types of institutions that might be used as comparisons.
So these midpoints are set to market median. Those over time
what we will do is look at those salary surveys on an annual basis
certainly to start with, we will look at those on an annual basis and
make adjustments to those, because those will reflect changes that
happen in the market. With a new structure, we want to do that more
routinely.
Sometimes an organization might do it every two or three years,
but initially we want to look at that information pretty regularly,
particularly because inflation right now is probably going to have an
impact on wages. We want to make sure we are keeping pace with wage
changes that happen in the market.
This information is just detail in terms of what the ranges are.
So these next two slides show sort of what the proposed structure is.
What we did then is we take that grade structure, and then we say,
okay, how long does it take to implement this?
As I have talked with the board, it is in the college's interests
from my perspective to get as far into the new schedule as possible.
People don't want to hear that their market comparisons indicate they
should be making, say, $60,000 and we are saying, yeah, but we are
going to pay you 50.
So the idea was to put as much as we can into trying to make this
as fair as possible, and we have done a really good job of placing
people well into the schedules.
You can see it here. This is again is that same information that
I showed you. It shows that it's consolidated the information.
The number of staff and administrator positions, this is the
number of positions, the other one was percentages, so this is the
number of positions that are step 1. Again, it shows you the
compression problem. And then it shows you how they are spread out
across the different steps right now.
Here is what the recommended placement is. Again, this is based
on the new job schedules, and then the amount of the years of
experience the individuals have in the jobs at Pima College.
Then placing them up according to that kind of logic and then
capping that placement at the third core tile mark. So the 75
-- remember the scales that had the 50% mark, so halfway between that
and the max is what we are talking about as being the cap point.
That's important to set that cap so that people both have the
ability to grow up above that level, but also that gives us the
ability to implement pay for performance for folks who in this
particular case would be making well above the market median for
their positions. So it places people well into the schedules based
on their experience in their job and gives them some ability to grow.
And obviously spreads out the compression a great deal.
Obviously we still have a compression problem. You will see this
also with the faculty that with a number of our employees have had a
number of years of experience in their positions, and that's what
leads to the compression when we put the cap on to do the
implementation.
Let's quickly shoot over to the faculty. The recommendation with
the faculty to the steering committee, Segal came back and
recommended two potential different structures, one of which was step
base more aligned with what it looks like right now but it had
differences in it.
Then the second one was more like what we just talked about with
the staff, which is core tile-based broadband structures.
Talking and working with the faculty steering committee, we
shifted towards focusing on a structure that's similar to what we
have now but enables the faculty to grow, so the initial proposal had
a number of faculty would have been placed at the absolute max point
of the initial schedule based on the market comparisons.
So what we did is we modified it with Segal and with the steering
committee's feedback, modified it to create a structure that has 20
steps so that our faculty will have some growth potential but that
the step placements and how it's structured in terms of hiring people
in with some experience, prior teaching experience prior to Pima, we
can then still place them, and in fact one of the recommendations was
to move that step placement up from what is currently step 6 up to as
high as step 8.
Let's take a look at what that looks like. So this is what the
current structure looks like for faculty. These grades are based on
their educational attainment. So that is going to continue, and I
will talk a little bit about some of the recommendations going
forward, but it sets, the new schedule is a little bit different
where it sets it up instead of being 15 steps, it's going to move up
to 20 steps.
In order to do that, you can see we placed in the comparison to
the staff positions these little red dots indicate where the market
median is for this.
By adding the steps and because our faculty are so senior in
their positions at the college, what we are saying is that the
faculty structure is set up a little bit higher than the market
median, indicating we are paying a little bit higher than the market
average, and that there is still growth for faculty above where their
max points are going to be.
There is a little bit of a difference in terms of how people are
set in their grades. One of the most common complaints about the
current structure is that occupational faculty are basically stuck at
the lowest grade level, because the educational attainment is very
focused not on occupational fields and qualifications and
certifications they may get in their areas of expertise, but it's
focused on educational attainment, so Master's degree plus 15 credit
hours, Master's degree plus 30 credit hours.
So what this new structure actually enables, folks with a
Bachelor's degree plus 30 credit hours to be placed in the
second-highest grade rather than the lowest. They would be located
in this S grade right now, so it gives some grade growth and you can
see that has a pretty big difference.
A number of faculty will move from the lowest grade level to the
second-lowest grade level. That will address partly some of the
current (indiscernible) out at the occupational area, and then
placing them with their years of experience as their initial
placement at the college plus the years of experience. The blue
section here indicates where folks are right now, so this is the
current structure.
Again, you can see all the compression is at step 6. Moving them
into the new schedule based on their initial placement plus their
years of experience, moves them along that line, and then of course
we have that compression problem that I talked about at step 12.
That still gives folks a great deal of growth potential and there is
significant increases, because as you can imagine, most people are
moving from this point to this point.
It is a big investment for both the staff and the faculty. 60%
of the positions at the college will receive adjustments when they
are placed on the new schedules.
That's a little bit more for faculty than staff. Partly that's
related to how many vacant positions are in those areas. And then
the placement costs are fairly proportional in terms of what the
total allocation is for salaries.
$1.4 million will go to the faculty to place them up into the
schedule, $3.9 million to staff and administrators, to place them up
into the schedule.
Then what we have been talking about with the board is that on
top of that, for the individuals who aren't scheduled, to get an
increase based on these market adjustments, because of recognizing
the pressures of inflation and so forth, is having a minimum
increase, to what we are recommending is that placing people in their
schedules and then folks, regular employees, would get a minimum
increase of $2,000 if it's not already covered in that increase to
the schedule.
So if someone was slotted to get $2,500 above the current level,
and I will clarify that, because people will be listening to every
word I say right now, so 2,500, if the new placement on the schedule
indicates that they would get $2,500, they would get $2,500. If
someone's new placement indicated they got $1,500, then the minimum
would kick in and they would get $2,000.
Now, what I want to make sure I'm really clear about is right now
there is a base the college is paying in the current year base salary
plus $1,000 for every individual. So when I say it's plus 2,000,
it's including -- so it's base pay plus the thousand dollars, then it
would be plus $2,000. Just to be really crystal clear so that folks
know what we are talking about.
Anyway, that fits within -- the total then ends up being, we have
that in the compensation adjustment with the fringe benefits and
having some contingency for adjustments that may need to happen after
the fact, fits into how much we have reserved in the budget.
I mentioned a couple of these things, this is going to be a work
in process. It's taken us two years of work to get to this point.
We are going to continue to refine this structure to meet the
college's needs.
Some of the things that are going to be critical is that once we
identify where people, so people are placed in the schedules, we have
a good idea where they are at, once this gets approved we will be
communicating with the individual employees in terms of where their
jobs have been placed and the years of experience, and we are going
to have a process in place for them to review that if they aren't
clear on what that process or they don't think that it was accurate,
we'll have a review process for those people. That's why it's
important to have some contingency in case there are additional costs
associated with it.
Then with the steering groups, we have some additional work we
want to do. One of them is to identify possible alternative
qualifications to educational attainment. So I mentioned in faculty
that it's based on traditional measures. For occupational faculty,
there are certain certifications that are important for their field
growth and for them to be able to teach effectively, teach their
students effectively. And what we want to do is have a group work on
identifying different qualifications that might also satisfy those
same kinds of measures.
There will be things that are equivalent in terms of the amount
of effort to, like, say, 30 additional credit hours. So it's not
like you take a class, an online class for an hour over the weekend
and that would qualify you for a significant pay increase.
No, these would be significant investments in educational
attainment of a different type. So that's one of the things we want
to work on.
We want to work on performance-based structures. I mentioned
that we have a max placement cap put in place. With the steering
groups, we have been talking with them about, well, you wouldn't get
this annual increase, remember, because I'm talking about this sort
of places you along your years of experience, that if you are on a
performance plan you would not be set up to move on that.
And the structures are set up where there can be adjustments
placed versus those base placements that could be based on your
performance, but we need to work with employees to identify whether
it's individual performance or whether it's group- or college-based
attainment of objectives, things like that, so that we could have
performance-based pay be a part of the structure.
So the structure can handle it. There just needs to be more
conversation and more understanding about what kind of an objective
measures, what kind of objective measures would be in place and the
criteria associated with that.
Then another area that we need to work on is there are certain
hard-to-fill areas in faculty positions, and actually in staff there
are, as well, that we might need to have some kind of a premium
structure put in place. Right now we only have one field that
qualifies for this, which is nursing, so we want to have some
conversation about how we would identify additional fields that
would, that we know that market-based pay, that the current structure
wouldn't be sufficient to be able to recruit faculty or staff
positions in certain hard-to-fill areas. That's a continuous effort
we will need to do in the coming year. So both identify some of the
criteria and how that would qualify, but also to put some things in
place to do that.
Then lastly, executive compensation was not included in this.
The high-level administrator positions in this structure are at this
point set. Not because there weren't indications that there should
be market-based adjustments for those positions. It's that the
priority at this point was staff and faculty and that the additional
review on the executive compensation needs to go forward. So right
now, the executive compensation is set at that minimum amount, that
$2,000 for each of those regular employees.
But that's something that it is important for us to think of all
of our employees in terms of being able to effectively recruit and
retain our talent, and that is true of our administrators as well.
One additional component I want to add to this that's come up
recently as we're working on this, as you might imagine, if the board
approves this, it is a lot of work to get all of these individual
positions, there are new notifications of positions, to get this set
up in terms of paying them for the next fiscal year. So the one
thing that I would ask the board to consider is to have this
effective for the first full pay period of the fiscal year.
So the pay periods right now end, the end of the one pay period
is July 1. The next pay period starts July 2. That is only one day
of effective pay for individuals, but in terms of implementations,
from assistance standpoint, it's two extra weeks. We can also make
sure that it doesn't impact anyone's fiscal pay based on what we are
calculating.
We just want to make sure that we don't rush ourselves into
getting this to happen where it will only affect one day in the one
pay period. We'd rather get it completely correct and have it
effective that first pay period that starts July 2nd.
Again, that's more of a logistics issue, but I want to throw that
out there and make sure the board is okay with doing that.
Again, we can make sure the whole fiscal pay is accurate with an
adjustment for that one day of difference, but it makes a big
difference in terms of getting all of these changes in place to
effectively pay people correctly.
I think I have finished up all of my information there. There is
additional information, and I'm happy to answer any questions the
board may have on the compensation recommendation.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you for that very extensive
description. We have been waiting for quite a long time for this. I
open this up for discussion to the board.
Any discussion or questions from the board?
Without any, I just would like -- go ahead, Board Member Clinco.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you very much.
I think that we should probably amend the motion with a few
additional modifications based on Dr. Bea's presentation.
Specifically the issue of just clarify and underscore that the board
supports the development of a performance pay model. That
high-demand fields be defined and be adjusted to make sure that we
can continue to retain the best-in-class instructors in those
specific fields. I think we would want that to come back to the
board at some point for at least sort of a presentation or review. I
understand the urgency of getting that implemented, but I think it
would be important to at least come back and articulate that to us.
I think we would also want to see an administrator compensation
study completed and adjustments made in that area as well so we are
doing universally the entire institution and we're not just
cherry-picking certain classifications. And finally, that it would
be retroactive to July 2.
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: I agree with those amendments.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Is it July 2 or 1?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: We'd be looking to implement this as of July
2.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Got it.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: For clarification, but it would be to
fiscal --
>> DR. DAVID BEA: For the fiscal year.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Just to clarify that it would be
consistent with that proposal.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: So the motion has been amended to
include the implementation on July 2, incorporating adjustments for
the hard-to-fill positions, and also for the implementation of
performance-based pay.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: And a class comp study for administration.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes, thank you. I actually do agree
with that. I think that there needs to be at this point I think we
can go forward and do a class comp for the administrator position as
well.
I know this has been a long time coming and it's taken a lot of
blood, sweat, and tears to get here, but I also want to reassure
everyone that the implementation of this, like Dr. Bea said, is going
to be tweaked as we go. It's the implementation. There is probably
going to be some bumps on the road, but I think overarching this is a
really good plan.
As far as fairness and justification, and I love that you use the
word in the very beginning, really honoring the value of our staff
and faculty and administrators, the value that they provide to our
school. This is really important. It's been a long time, but we are
here now. So not looking back. Let's move forward.
Again, we do need to tweak the implementation of it. There is a
lot of questions surrounding the placement caps, for instance. There
is a lot of questions involving the length of time, longevity, all of
that, and performance-based studies.
So what I would like to add, and I've shared this with the board
in the past is that the importance of performance-based salaries and
performance-based promotions is keeping the supervisors, whether they
are staff, faculty, or administrators, accountable, held accountable,
to make it as objective as possible. You implement that and
incorporate that into the data and perhaps even a point system when
you are implementing the performance-based studies and whatever,
whether it's annual or twice-a-year review, people that are actually
writing those performance reports need to also be held accountable
for that. It's really important. Thank you so much.
Dr. Bea?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Just one point of clarification. When I said
executive administrators, the lower-level administrators are going to
get adjustments. So deans, executive directors are included in this.
It's the positions above those that are the ones that need additional
work.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: I wanted to ask a question, actually,
too. In one of our study sessions you inferred that -- I don't know
if it was the average or if it was those that will be adjusted, it's
going to be the ones that are going to be adjusted up will be
approximately a 7% increase.
Is that still correct?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: That's on average across, yes. It's those who
are actually adjusted up, the average is actually higher. What I'm
saying is that 7% was the across the entire employee group when we
talk about those who are adjusted upwards. There are a number of
folks who get quite a bit more than 7%, quite a bit more.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Great. Thank you so much. And for
your hard work and especially thank you to everybody involved in
ensuring we have the funds to be able to implement this which is
really extraordinary.
Any other discussion or questions from the board before we vote?
Mr. Silvyn, I would like to ask you to take a roll call vote for
this action item.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Dr. Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Mr. Clinco?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Ripley?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes.
Thank you very much, board. The motion and the action item
passes unanimously. So we go to our last action item, 9.3, fiscal
year 2023 employee salaries and wages.
Mr. Silvyn, would you please read the description?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: The chancellor recommends the Governing
Board approve employee salary and wage rates for fiscal year 2023
including placement for all regular employees according to the new
compensation structure proposal, providing a minimum compensation
increase of $2,000 over fiscal year 2022 salaries and wages for
regular employees and increasing the base adjunct faculty pay rate by
3.4% to $900 per load hour.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: So moved.
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Second.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Any other discussion the chancellor
might have concerning this action item?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Chair Ripley, I think Dr. Bea laid this out
very nicely in his earlier presentation. If there are any additional
questions regarding this, we'd be glad to answer that. Otherwise, I
don't know that we need to provide any additional overview.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you so much.
With that, I open it up to discussion by the board members.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I have a question.
When it says all regular employees, is that including the
executive team?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: The executive team, as we were just talking
about, the executive team is not set up to be placed and get
adjustments related to the scale. They are scheduled to get the
minimum adjustment. So all regular employees would get the higher of
where their placement is or $2,000.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you. Any other questions or
discussion? Board members?
Without any further discussion, Mr. Silvyn, would you please
conduct a roll call vote on this motion?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Yes. Mr. Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Garcia?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Dr. Hay?
>> DR. MEREDITH HAY: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Mr. Clinco?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Yes.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Ms. Ripley?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes.
With that, this action item passes unanimously, and I would
lastly say thank you so much, everybody, who has championed these
last three action items, particularly Provost Duran-Cerda, thank you
so much for all you have done for really being one of the champions.
There are several, but thank you to you and your staff. This has
been a long time coming, and I'm happy that we are here.
Next I'd like to go to item No. 10 on the agenda. We will now go
to public comment. We have several public comment requests here.
Let's start at the top. First up is Mr. Richard Hernandez for
public comment. Are you here online?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: He's here in person.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Go ahead, please.
>> Buenos noches. I'm Richard. I was a co-chair for about 35
years. I have worked with hundreds of students. I know the value of
Pima Community College, especially in my neighborhood on the south
side, predominantly minority, almost exclusively Hispanic. We know
that this is our community college.
But today I'm here because I want to sound the alarm. It's
really important to me that I sound the alarm to everybody. We have
a crisis at Pima Community College. We really do.
So what does that mean? In CV14-02515, Chancellor Lee Lambert
was found guilty of violating the civil rights of Mr. Katz.
In CV15-00260, Ms. or Mrs., I'm not sure which, Culiodon
(phonetic) was also found to be a victim of Lee Lambert in violation
of her civil rights.
Today we have a third one working its way through the federal
system. It's Ward versus Lee Lambert and Pima College. All
indications are that it looks like we will have a third victim.
So it begs to ask this board and the community, teachers,
faculty, staff, voters, taxpayers, what's the limit of victims that
we are going to allow Lee Lambert to make? In my mind, the second
one he should have been fired. We are having a third.
So let me ask Board Member Meredith, just as a narrative, not for
response, is four okay with you?
How about, you, Cat? Is five victims when you will finally say
no more? How about you, Demion? Six?
Actually, I will take that back. My sense is you and the
chancellor enjoy a personal relationship. I doubt that there is a
number.
So now I'm speaking to the public. Do we value, do we support,
do we advocate for victims or do we encourage the perpetrator? A
serious problem we have here at Pima Community College.
The next issue I want to address is how the board majority
addresses the board minority. In particular, I will laser-focus here
on Demion. When you speak to Maria in the tone that you do, you're
offensive. She's a woman, she's your senior, she's Latina. She was
elected by the people, not appointed. In your first term to this
college, you were appointed. Need I recall.
Luis, a proud Yaqui. He doesn't engage you in verbal Judo
because that's not culturally okay. I will say one thing for you,
Demion, you are a minority, a gay man. But so am I.
You see this beautiful brown skin? I'm a Latino gay man, and I'm
calling you out as a gay man to say stop the drama. Stop it.
My last point today goes to you, Cat. At the last board meeting,
you allowed a member of the audience to talk for 10 minutes without
interruption. You are creating a dangerous precedence, a
classification of if you are well to do, if you are prominent, if you
have money, if you are a Republican, you get to address this board
for 10 minutes. But if you are a minority like me on the south side,
a Hispanic, a gay man, we only get 3 minutes.
My sense is you know that was wrong, and you should acknowledge
that. We want to treat my maker, I hope your maker feels the same,
we are all equal. We are all the same. That was wrong.
I'm going to conclude today by asking the public the same
question I'm asking the board: How many victims? How many more
victims? Our neighbors, friends, maybe you see them out eating, a
sporting event, or they go to their church. They are civil rights
victims. How many victims will it take before you fire Lee Lambert?
Thank you.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you for those comments.
Next we have No. 3. Makyla Hays. You have the floor.
>> MAKYLA HAYS: Good evening, Chair Ripley, Chancellor, board
members, colleagues and guests. I'm Makyla Hays, math faculty, class
and comp steering committee member, and PCCEA president.
A good amount of work has been done on the class and comp study,
but there are still a few significant questions and discussions to be
had for these schedules to be ready to go July 1. One large concern
is that faculty beyond the steering committee have not had a real
opportunity to give input.
E-mail updates have been surface level with no detail, and two
information sessions in March contain very little specifics. The
actual schedule and placement rules were shared with the faculty at
large for the first time last Friday after most faculty are off
contract with only a general invitation to e-mail with questions.
Several questions asked in the meeting were unable to be answered
and many faculty left confused and concerned about the actual impact
and fairness of the new schedule.
I personally have great concerns about the rules for placement of
current faculty members that would lead to experience at Pima being
valued less than experience outside of Pima in certain cases, what
Dr. Bea described as salary inversion.
I have been told this would be looked at, but as of last Friday,
it was not yet fixed. A large number of faculty have been stuck at
step 6 on the old schedule. The proposed placement rules would have
an even greater number of faculty compressed the new step 12.
This means people who have worked at Pima for 10 years and those
with 20-plus years will likely be on the same step with potentially
the same pay. I say potentially, because there are faculty who
currently make more than this placement rule would allow.
The college has promised that faculty would receive a $2,000
minimum raise, which is great, until you consider the fact that they
may have to wait five or six years for their placement on the salary
schedule to catch up with their current salary. This means faculty
who have been working faithfully for us the longest may end up going
13 or 14 years without a significant increase in their salaries.
I worry this decision by the college will hurt morale and
motivate some amazing faculty to move on because they don't feel
valued by the college. The reason given for this step cap was to
allow for budget constraint.
We currently have faculty on 15 steps of our current schedule.
If the placement cap on the new schedule was 15 rather than 12, that
would alleviate some of the compression and allow for recognition of
our longer-term faculty. I ask the board to prioritize money from
that $9 million that isn't currently spent to raise the placement cap
for faculty.
Another missing piece is for those who don't fit on the schedule
from tonight's packet. Nursing faculty are currently paid on a
different salary table, as you heard. As of right now, they don't
know what their pay will look like in the new system. They know they
will have a stipend increase but they haven't been told what it is.
Also, our 12-month faculty who would start receiving this pay on
July 1 haven't seen what their pay will look like yet either.
After the presentation last week by HR, I sent out a survey to
faculty. Due to people being off contract and the short turnaround
time, I only received 37 responses. However, of those 37 responses,
only 17 answered that the schedule was acceptable with several noting
reservations and unanswered questions. 22 had concerns about whether
the hiring range is going to be enough to attract new faculty to
their area. Only four people, four, felt that the placement of
current faculty was fair. And 25 out of 37 said this new schedule
does not communicate that Pima values faculty experience or loyalty
mainly due to the placement cap at step 12.
I'm asking you to delay implementation of the class and comp
recommendations until the issues I outlined can be resolved, that the
board ensure that the cap at step 12 be re-evaluated, that placement
of current faculty members within the hiring range be recalculated,
and that the nursing faculty and 12-month faculty adjustments would
be shared out ASAP with all faculty.
I look forward to working together to reach a resolution on these
crucial items. I just want to say overall I think it can be worked
out. I'm just really concerned about the timeline.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you very much.
I just wanted to add I think that there is a lot of concerns
here. I would strongly recommend, Dr. Bea, that you get together and
maybe address these concerns one by one. And again, the
implementation of this, as we suggested, is still being tweaked. I
think there is room to have further dialogue. I think it's going to
be really important for the chancellor and Dr. Bea to talk to you,
Makyla, so we can come up with a solution.
Thank you.
Next on our list here is Mr. James Hart. Are you here? I will
give it a couple minutes. A lot of people here. I don't see your
name. If not, we can circle back.
We can go next to, it says here Heaven Rendon (phonetic) is on
the list, but it says they just want to listen in. Do you want to
speak, or are you just here for audience participation?
Probably just for listening.
Armida McKenna. Armida? You have the floor.
>> Now more than ever we call to the community to support Board
Members Luis Gonzales and Maria Garcia for their leadership,
forward-thinking and rejection of the matters pending to the
management of Pima Community College.
Under the direction of Chancellor Lambert and his personal board
members, we have been shielded from the circumstances that surround
Pima Community College. We are on the verge of losing a community
college due to the inability of the faculty to follow the demands of
the course catalog and fulfill the obligations entrusted.
Students are not able to take the courses necessary to obtain a
two-year certification to transfer to a university. Programs that
are vital and significant to the community have been terminated. The
current four-year program feeding into NAU are fictitiously leading
our children nowhere.
Pima Community College today cannot compete with the community
demands based on researched and documented data, primarily the vulgar
salary of Chancellor Lambert, his institutional lies,
ineffectiveness, violation of employees' Civil Rights, his
questionable procurement deals, his entering of intergovernmental
agreements without the full consent of the board, the continued rise
of tuition and his disrespectful actions towards the faculty and two
minority board members.
To these members, I apologize for not recognizing their efforts
in supporting our community and the rights of the marginalized.
We have been asleep and the invasion has been successful. It
took a slap in the face from the Arizona Daily Star to open our eyes
to the injustice of the elite populace who has not a child to educate
within the community setting.
They ask for applause to keep the momentum to take over the
opportunities of our children to add to their continued wealth. In
summary, on behalf of the unrepresented students, faculty, parents,
grandparents, and community members who invest their funds so that
the educational resources are available to their community, we demand
that under the true leadership of all the Governing Board members to
direct Chancellor Lambert to honor our community college's real
mission and to return to the community a vital mechanism that feeds
our community.
We value a community college, not a personal, privatized
institution that has been sold for profit.
Thank you.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you for your comments.
The next person on the list is Amber Smith. There's no notation,
and I'm not sure if Amber Smith is here to speak or just to listen.
Amber Smith?
Okay. We can go to the next person. Lawrence Lucero.
>> Hello. Sorry, I'm driving so I'm having to pull over.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Yes, Amber, go ahead.
>> My name is Amber Smith. Give me 15 seconds so I'm not a
hazard here on the road.
Okay? As a citizen in this community, I too am a Latina woman,
and I have three children under the age of 14, all of which I hope
have the privilege to be able to go to Pima Community College.
I'm extremely concerned with some of the activities of members of
this board. There has been repeated violations of the state's Open
Meeting Laws, and information from executive sessions have been
shared with members of the community by two of our board members,
Maria Garcia and Luis Gonzales.
These are elected positions that require community trust. To not
follow the basic rules is extremely concerning and makes me wonder
what other rules are they breaking in their elected spots.
I have actively followed the board's activities and have
personally heard of the unfounded attacks on Chancellor Lambert that
have acted as an absolute distraction.
Now these same board members that have lost public trust are
purposely sabotaging the chancellor's reputation in spite of an
extensive track record of success positioning the college as one of
the top community colleges in the country.
The community has shown its support in not only supporting a
proposition but in giving money. As a Pima Foundation board member,
I can personally speak to the fact that in the last few years
donations have doubled the size of the Foundation to 14 million, and
we are on target to double that number again.
That's because the college is a proven community leader. Under
Chancellor Lambert they are building people out of poverty and
growing our economy with all residents.
Yet we have these two board members who have lost the public
trust, attacking the chancellor, and in turn disrespecting the rest
of the board, the college faculty, students, investors, and the
alumni.
Under the chancellor's leadership the college is stable and
growing and nationally renowned. Now we are at risk of being
sanctioned because of the activities of Ms. Garcia and Mr. Gonzales.
This is unacceptable.
Thank you.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you for your comments. Please
drive safely.
The next person on the list is Mr. Lawrence Lucero.
Are you online or in person?
>> I am online. Thank you.
I'm better known at Larry Lucero, retired utility executive out
of Tucson Electric Power and previously had worked at Pima County
government in employment and training.
I'm very familiar with the resources and the opportunities that
Pima Community College has presented this community for decades.
It is troubling to me that I have become aware of some missteps
by a couple of the board members as reported in a letter that was
noted in your May 11 Pima Community College board meeting from the
Office of the Arizona Attorney General. I would hope that this is
sorted out by the board and appropriate action is taken to correct
those missteps.
It is incumbent upon the board to try to work in a collaborative
manner, and I have seen that that's been very difficult, but I yet
have confidence that those missteps that have been made aware to you
by the attorney general's letter of May 11 can be corrected, and
hopefully some resolution will occur. I leave that to you all to
address as your charter calls for.
On a positive note, I want to congratulate Chancellor Lee Lambert
and his excellent senior leadership team. They have done a masterful
job of regaining the certification for the community college which
was lost some time ago and followed by an intense effort to better
understand the needs of employers today and into the future.
The college has historically been agile at establishing training
programs to meet the needs of our community's employers, but most
importantly, meeting the needs of the workforce. As a utility
executive, I personally saw the collaborative success between Tucson
Electric Power, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and
the community college in partnership to take young people and prepare
them for the very rigorous apprenticeship training program that the
electric utility industry requires.
Those graduates are so well trained, and it's a testament to the
effort, the collaborative effort between one employer and the
community college system. For that, I'm grateful for your efforts
and expect the board to continue to support the vision of Chancellor
Lambert.
Thank you for allowing me to comment.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thanks very much for those comments.
Next on the list we have Howard Stewart. Mr. Stewart, are you on
the line?
>> Yes, I am. Thank you for allowing me to comment. Good
evening. I'm Howard Stewart, president, CEO of AGM Container
Controls. We are a local Tucson manufacturing company with 120
employees. It started in 1970. AGM has been a part of Tucson's
business community for the exact same length of time as Pima itself.
I requested to speak today because both tuition reimbursement and
Pima Community College are near and dear to my heart. In fact, in
2019 alone, meaning pre-COVID, 27% of AGM's workforce attended
college.
This means that 34 AGM employees took 124 courses that year. Of
these, 70% elected to attend Pima College because PCC's curriculum is
specifically geared towards helping educate our community's
workforce.
In addition, Pima offers in-person, online, virtual, hybrid
classes, which means that Pima is flexible for any and all workplace
schedules. Pima is also a great value, considering that their
classes cost only 27% of what one would pay to take the same
coursework at our local university.
However, what's most impressive to me is how, in less than a
decade, Pima, under Chancellor Lee Lambert's leadership, has
radically been transformed from a junior college that was in a
virtual death spiral, including a leadership crisis, accreditation,
probation, and programs that weren't relevant to employers' needs,
and turned it into a juggernaut of an institution, such that we can
now boast national leadership in aviation, aviation technology,
cybersecurity, health professions, automotive technology, as well as
advanced manufacturing.
I'm also pleased that Pima emphasizes equity as an extension of
their ethical values in that Pima's leadership is doing everything
possible to remove the barriers to student success, especially for
people of color.
That is why I was recently dumbstruck to learn that at the May 11
board meeting two members of Pima's board of governance, Ms. Garcia
and Mr. Gonzales, have been, over the years, repeatedly verbally
attacking the chancellor, telling untruths, impugning his character,
professionalism, and integrity, as well as frequently accusing him of
racism, violating procurement policies and mishandling of college
funds.
Yet it's my understanding that despite multiple time-wasting
investigations into such matters, every one of these spurious charges
has been found to be without merit and evidence.
What's more, Arizona's attorney general recently determined that
both of these members have repetitively broken Arizona's meeting laws
on various occasions, on various counts, doing so in violation of the
laws they vowed to uphold when they initially took their oath of
office.
Nevertheless, amazingly enough, these trouble-making and
disruptive board members are in fact responsible for managing both
the chancellor's as well as Pima's mission which, in my mind, is akin
to putting unscrupulous extremists in charge of running one of this
community's most important educational institutions.
Accordingly, I respectfully call on both members to do the
honorable and appropriate action in that they should step down from
their governing positions in order to let the chancellor and his
leadership team complete their worthy, ongoing mission.
Thank you for this opportunity to comment.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you very much for your comments.
We have one last speaker, Mr. Brendan Lyons.
Are you online? Are you online?
>> Chair Ripley, Chancellor Lambert, members of the board. I
thank you for your giving me the opportunity to speak today.
As I'm listening to all these speakers speak here, I'm sitting
here, can't say all of them, but some, I'm embarrassed. As a
three-time Associate's degree graduate from PCC, I'm embarrassed and
appalled. I'm embarrassed and appalled about the accusations
lambasted at the chancellor.
As a proud asset gold advanced leadership program graduate from
the college, as a proud emerging leaders program student
representative, and representative of the 108th Arizona Town Hall
focusing on building relationships between Arizona and Mexico, I'm
embarrassed.
As a keynote speaker at PCC's multicultural convocation upon
graduating back in 2016, I'm embarrassed. As a featured speaker,
Chancellor Lambert's All College Day, I am embarrassed.
You see, Pima Community College has given me the tools necessary
to become the leader that I am today, a proud leader. I'm an
associate member of the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, a proud
Flinn-Brown fellow from the Arizona Center for Civic Leadership. I'm
part of the emerging leaders council mentorship committee, serving as
chair with Tucson Metro Chamber of Commerce.
I'm part of the advocacy committee with Tucson Young
Professionals. (Audio lost.)
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: I think we lost you. You dropped out.
Hello?
It looks as if Mr. Lyons has dropped off. I don't know if he's
on his telephone or not, but we will give it another couple seconds.
Not sure if he will return.
With that said, that was our last speaker for public call to the
audience, and we can move forward with the next agenda item, remarks
by the Governing Board. With that, I would just like to open the
remarks by -- let's just go around the horn here.
Board Member Garcia, would you like to begin?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Yes, I would.
First of all, I want to state these are my opinions, and I have
my reasons for them. So I just would like to read a statement. I
thought about it (indiscernible).
I want to talk to you tonight about the current state of Pima
College. I want to emphasize that the teaching and learning success
of our students at the college are due to the dedication of our
faculty and staff.
It is not, as some people seem to believe, that the sole result
any one person, mainly Lee Lambert. Therefore, the practice of
increasing salaries for the executive team and very small or no
increases for our faculty and staff should end.
I wish to inform the public that the chancellor's salary and
compensation package is greater than 400,000. That is more than the
compensation of the City Manager of Tucson, the superintendent of
TUSD, and the Pima County Administrator.
While the chancellor can enjoy his $400,000, county taxpayers
will be paying more in taxes next year to support PCC. Students will
pay more tuition. Yet PCC enrollment has dropped more than 5,000
students.
The chancellor professes his love for PCC and Pima County, but in
the last year he has been an unsuccessful applicant for chancellor at
three community colleges: (Indiscernible) College, San Diego,
Ventura Community College.
Mr. Lambert, aren't you happy at PCC? Instead of traveling and
finding a new job, perhaps Mr. Lambert should study the U.S.
Constitution, specifically the right to due process. Twice in the
last few years, federal judges have found Mr. Lambert and PCC denied
two terminated employees their due process.
Now a new complaint has been filed against PCC by William Ward,
alleging denial of due process when his contract was terminated.
Earlier the chancellor had removed Mr. Ward from taking part in
discussions regarding a proposal from the Trane Company. Let me
quote from Mr. Ward's complaint, now in federal court.
Quote, Chancellor Lambert terminated Mr. Ward's employment
because Mr. Ward was candid with the board about the fact that the
Trane Company had an unfair advantage during the bidding process, and
that he had been removed from the process because he was not willing
to ignore procedures and violations of bidding and purchasing process
to favor the Trane Company.
Who will pay the settlement of Mr. William Ward if he prevails
against the chancellor in his personal capacity?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Point of order, Chairwoman Ripley.
We are now discussing issues that are... (multiple people
speaking).
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: ...classes for students to get their
Associate's degree and transferred to a four-year college, classes
for adults and those needing to improve their writing and other
skills. Training or technical jobs. All three tracks deserve
attention. However, the chancellor has focused attention giving
priority to the technical vocational track.
I strongly support technical training. But not when the academic
programs are ignored. Who benefits from the chancellor emphasis on
nonacademic vocational programs? Clearly it is the business
community, eager to hire men and women trained by PCC.
An election is coming up this fall by board colleagues. Demion
Clinco is running for re-election, and he's been strongly backed by
guess who? The business community. Mr. Clinco has raised over
$113,000.
This is unheard of an amount for a PCC board seat. Why? Several
business owners have donated the maximum amount of $6,450. I suggest
that people go to the Pima County Elections Department website to
download Mr. Clinco's latest financial report.
Do the chancellor and Mr. Clinco want to turn PCC into a
vocational institution? See how many money the chancellor has
allocated for tech. Then judge for yourself. Our Pima College was
established to address the needs of all our community.
Finally, the few people who are expressing their support for the
chancellor should have waited until we receive the findings of the
investigation by the Higher Learning Commission.
Time will tell. Was it wise to fully endorse Lee Lambert before
the jury has spoken? Thank you.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Board Member Gonzales?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: I want to inform the PCC faculty, staff,
students, and the public about the reason, focused visit of the
Higher Learning Commission, our accreditor.
The HLC visit was based on complaint by Mr. Bill Ward, the former
vice chancellor for facilities. I want to inform you tonight that
this complaint is among multiple complaints filed with the HLC.
I have repeatedly asserted the chancellor wrongfully terminated
Mr. Ward. This was done with a tacit approval by Mr. Clinco, Dr.
Hay, and Ms. Ripley, the board majority.
The public is entitled to understand the basis of Mr. Ward's
complaint. In recent months, the chancellor and other members of the
board have alleged Ms. Garcia and I were the reason for the HLC
visit.
Mr. Ward's complaint states, quote, on June 3, 2020, I voiced my
concern that the board, chancellor, executive vice chancellor for
finance, administration, and college legal counsel violated
purchasing contract bidding process regulations and statute in order
to favor the Trane Company, quote.
Notice in that complaint, only three individuals are named: The
chancellor, executive vice chancellor, college legal counsel. The
chancellor can spin it all he wants, but he's the party named in this
complaint. Ms. Garcia and I are not mentioned.
At the board's May meeting, former board member Sylvia Lee
demanded Ms. Garcia and I resign. The record indicates that she has
a history of demanding PCC board members to resign.
In early 2013, The Star reported Ms. Lee asked for her four PCC
board colleagues to resign. They did not resign, and neither will I.
Perhaps she recalls her apologies to Mr. Mario Gonzales as reported
by the Arizona Daily Star on March 20, 2017. Mario, I want to
apologize for questioning you for being supportive or trying to
sabotage PCC. I have to remind myself that although we differ in
many ways, we are similar in that we are passionate about the college
and the community. Close quote.
The culture at PCC has not changed. The public will recall
Sylvia Lee, apparently the self -appointed spokesman for chancellor,
feel that she must protect the chancellor. She should recall that
she's not the only one who is passionate about the well-being of the
college. In a democracy, it's possible to assert the chancellor has
overstayed his welcome here on the basis of how one sees his
performance.
Reasonable people can disagree except at PCC on this board.
Maybe it's time for another board member to understand that there are
many sides to every story. The majority is entitled to have their
own opinion but not on their own facts. They have disregarded the
facts in some cases for their own agenda. The board majority
supports the chancellor even though the public record shows he wishes
to move on.
The future of PCC is not dependent on Mr. Lambert being
chancellor. After all, he has applied for three positions in the
past year.
Finally, PCC purchased Tucson Inn, which was condemned by the
City of Tucson, and two other dilapidated motels. How many millions
of taxpayers' dollars will be required to renovate these motels?
This was not on the PCC most recent educational master plan. Yet it
is appears that Mr. Clinco will continue his preservation efforts at
the taxpayers' expense.
In summary, Mr. Clinco, do you still believe that I should recuse
myself from all Yaqui and Native American issues? The last thing is
I want to say in my language. (Speaking native language.) That's a
very strong word. It is in your hands.
And the final thing I'm going to say is the truth will prevail.
Thank you.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you. I believe that Dr. Hay has
left. She's overseas. So I will go to Board Member Clinco for the
next board remarks.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Thank you very much, Board Member Ripley.
First I want to thank the faculty and the staff and the
administrators. You know, one of the very best evenings of the
entire year is our graduation, and the graduation this year was held
at Kino Stadium. And to see the thousands of graduates cross the
stage to receive their certificates and degrees is truly inspiring.
It's truly why we are here as a college board, the function and
purpose, which is to provide opportunities and meet learners where
they are and take them where they want to go. And seeing that only a
few weeks ago really is the genuine mission of this institution.
I just wanted to again thank the faculty and the staff and the
administrators and Chancellor Lambert who work tirelessly throughout
the year to make that happen.
I want to thank the staff who actually mounted and organized the
event. It was really outstanding, and I hope we continue to do it
outside at Kino Stadium. It was just such a lovely setting.
I also want to thank the mayor for her attendance and giving a
keynote speech. Her remarks were really inspiring and speak to the
mission and purpose of the institution.
Finally, I just want to take a personal moment of privilege and
recognize the retirement of Mike Stack who was a faculty member in
our art department on the East Campus.
I had numerous interactions with Professor Stack, and over the
years it's just been so inspiring to see the Sculptor on Campus
program, the integration of 21st Century learning skills in his
classrooms, his strong community participation that has always so
proudly represented the college.
All of the faculty who work for us day in and day out improving
the quality of life of students deserve applause, but Mr. Stack went
above and beyond. I just didn't want his retirement to go unnoted.
With that, I'm going to conclude my remarks.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you very much for those remarks,
as well. Again, we have lost one of our board members who is
overseas but kindly phoned in, even though I think she's about 10
hours later than us.
I'd like to thank everyone for being here either in person or
virtually at our last board meeting before we break for the summer
for this school year. It's been yet another challenging year. We
have managed to hold our meetings, study sessions, and scores of
events both virtually or hybrid or in person.
I think we have done the best we could, and I'm not just talking
about the board. I'm talking about the staff, faculty,
administrators. Everyone has done a bang-up job at keeping the
school going, and the students for showing up. The resilience,
professionalism that you performed all these duties is really
noteworthy and a testament to the much deeper sense of service and
community that we have here at Pima Community College.
This is a community college. Everyone here, everyone on this
Zoom, everyone associated with it is doing it because they care.
There is not a giant, fat paycheck involved. We are all here because
of service. Thank you so much.
Thank you especially for doing all your part for our most worthy
students. And to our over 4,500, I believe, graduates, both
certificate as well as those going on to two-year programs.
Congratulations, man. It's been a hard year, and you did it.
I was suffering from COVID at the time. I missed graduation. I
heard it was phenomenal and a really magical evening.
Students, you will always remain in the Pima family, and we hope
to see you again any time in the future. If you are in need of
furthering your education or coming back to teach, we would love that
as well. We are here to champion you.
I would like to also pause right now, I think it's important, in
light of everything that's happened this evening and over the past
few weeks, to acknowledge all of our collective grief, our sadness,
outrage, and the pain experienced these past few weeks as we go
through, as a nation and as a community, far too often the aftermath
of yet another senseless mass shooting involving children and
involving our most at-risk minority populations. It's literally
breaking my heart. I actually went to the ER. There's simply no
words to describe the anguish and pain of the survivors.
I know you've all read the news and we all grieve separately and
we all grieve differently. The fact that these shootings have had a
profoundly deep impact on many of us here is proof that we are all
connected. Everyone here, we are on Zoom now, but believe me, we are
connected as human beings, or as I have heard someone say once, we
are souls walking around in human suits. Let's remember that.
Collective pain is real and it's debilitating. Please, please,
please take care of yourselves mentally and physically as we enter
the summer. Grieve silently, grieve outwardly, but nevertheless,
grieve. It is human.
Also take the time to reflect on how we can help future
generations, perhaps most humbly here through our humble community
college to become happier, productive, and joyful, thriving citizens.
Please take a moment as we break for the summer to reflect on the
many blessings we have as Pima employees, students, and community
supporters. We are family. Yeah, we can all complain to each other
and demand better everything. We all need to be better, all of us.
We can all do better. That's fine. But at the end of the day, let's
pull together and do that together.
When we return this fall, I hope we can be more situationally
aware of our colleagues, our families, our friends. It's corny, but
kindness goes a long way. There are students and colleagues who are
suffering, and we will never ever know unless we take the time to
know.
Take the time for acts of kindness. Take the time to know your
colleagues. It's contagious.
Again, unfortunately I fell ill during graduation. COVID is
real, you guys. It's huge. I jog, I'm in shape, I have three
vaccines, and I still got it. It was horrifying.
I was in ER. It was not fun. It's real and there is a spike
going on right now. This is why I'm on Zoom.
Again, perspective is one thing you gain when you are lying in a
hospital bed, not knowing if you are ever going to get up again. The
virus is smart, it's evolving, it's quick, debilitating, but
thankfully with vaccines and boosters it's not necessarily deadly.
I'm here. So please continue to be vigilant. Take care of
yourselves this summer. Thank you very much for this long board
meeting. The public hearing was really important. Passing that
budget was huge so we can go forward. Class and comp was big, and
again, it's big and it's messy, but we got it done. We are tweaking
it. It's going to take some time to really get to where we need to
go with all of the implementations of that.
Thank you, finance team, and everybody else, all of the advisors.
Makyla, your remarks are not going unheard. We will still work on
this.
Again, working hand in hand with our business leaders, a lot of
talk about this, but we have been talking about this a lot, our
business leaders from industry, IT, there are 600,000 empty jobs
across the country in IT alone, in cybersecurity. The trades,
healthcare, public safety, all of these things, all of the trades, as
well as the path to four-year colleges. It's seriously important,
but I assure you that board members, myself included, and I know all
five of us are very interested and profoundly dedicated to ensuring
that the liberal arts and all the other curriculum we have at Pima is
intact. That's what a community college is. We're not a voc tech.
We are a community college. Personally, as a musician, as an actor,
the arts are really important to me.
I urge the board to please continue to fulfill our duties as
oversight, as cheerleaders, and as good stewards of the mission and
goals of our college. I continue to conduct as much personal
research, community outreach, and training opportunities I can manage
in order to fulfill these duties. It's a lot of work, but it's
something that we do out of love for the school and for the students
and mostly for this community.
As we enter this month of June, we also celebrate Pride. I want
to make that clear right now. We celebrate Pride across the nation.
In Tucson we celebrate in September.
I'm filled with hope that our DEI, diversity, equity, and
inclusion efforts will continue. All of this is evolving. We can
all do and be better. The DEI efforts are in fact -- the goal is to
someday not need to have a DEI office, that it will be so ubiquitous,
we don't even have an office called DEI.
I'm also filled with hope that we can continue to make progress
with the progression and completion rates of all students, especially
our Hispanic male and underrepresented student populations.
It's huge. It's there. I know for a fact that people working in
enrollment and in community outreach, from the provost and president
of campuses, it's on the forefront of their minds.
I'm hopeful that the newly organized enrollment and external
relations committee, which we are standing up, will help us reach
every single student who desires an affordable and relevant higher
education. This is our goal.
We directed the chancellor to conduct that class comp last year.
It hasn't been done in years. I really hope to see that implemented
to the satisfaction of everybody.
We briefed already the average increase is 7%, and I know perhaps
it's not enough for some people, but it's a great start. I hope that
we can see that implementation.
Lastly, I'd like to give a much overdue shoutout to our library
and IT staff. This is a personal moment for me. I visit the
libraries and work with the IT staffs at every campus. Each and
every time I visit, without them knowing who I am, incognito in a
hoodie, I feel immersed in a shower of positivity, welcoming and joy.
I could set up camp and live in one of those libraries. It's that
comfortable and that welcoming. For that reason, I'm quite sure our
students must feel the same thing.
Thank you for all you do and for our behind-the-scenes IT staffs.
You make it happen every day with patience, kindness, little thanks,
and attention to detail that does not go unnoticed by me at least.
Thank you for that. Thank you for your support and hard work.
With that, I'm going to go on to our next agenda item, the
reports. Thank you for indulging me with that.
First up, administration reports, Strategic Enrollment Plan by
Dr. David Dori.
Go ahead.
>> DR. DORI: Thank you, Chair Ripley, members of the board,
Chancellor Lambert, colleagues, guests, and students.
So Dr. Duran-Cerda and I, we are going to present together
because of the intersectionality of both the Strategic Enrollment
Plan and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan.
These plans are integrated, and really DEI is the operating
system and the lens by which we focus all of our initiatives,
including enrollment and retention.
I will focus on the Strategic Enrollment Plan, and then
Dr. Duran-Cerda will focus on the DEI plan.
So the Strategic Enrollment Plan is really a multi-year
institutional plan that really is focused on identifying, recruiting,
enrolling, retaining, completing, and then reskilling learners in our
community.
As you will see in the executive summary, and as you see in the
full plan, it's very goal oriented, it's actionable, and it's
measurable.
This plan, the work really began in the fall of 2021 with student
affairs enrollment management. I really want to thank David Arellano
who has really been the point person leading the work. We culminated
with a community forum at the end of May to discuss both of these
plans. We had about 70 participants.
So this plan really looks holistically at the new landscape of
higher education over the next five years. Higher education, the
landscape has rapidly shifted this last decade. You know, there is a
lot of forces, including the pandemic, demographic shifts, increased
competition, funding changes, that really are affecting learners in
Pima County and the greater Tucson community.
The way we learn, the way we teach, the way we provide services
has really changed greatly along with our learners' expectations.
And so we are very much focused on this new landscape, and I think we
are really shifting the entire organization to respond to some of
these new forces.
We are at a pivotal point in terms of if you look at enrollment
projections over the next, really the next ten years. You know,
despite there are challenges across the nation in terms of
enrollment, declines particularly in community colleges, as you can
see from this graphic, but we hope to really gain enrollment over the
term of this plan.
As you can see, the trend data shows that there is some potential
for growth, but you are going to see some pretty significant declines
in terms of that population. So, you know, that really calls for a
really strong enrollment plan, and I'm really proud of the work that
everyone has done I think to really focus on some of the challenges
ahead.
Again, DEI is the lens by which we view all of our college
initiatives. So both the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan and
the Strategic Enrollment Plan are really in alignment with two very
important institutional goals: To increase completer counts to 6,000
by 2024/'25 and to double the completer counts of Hispanic or Latino,
American Indian, and Alaskan Native, Black or African American
learners by 2024/'25.
In terms of the SEMP goals, the primary goal of the SEMP is to
increase institutional head count by 4% annually or 6,500 students
per year culminating in 37,000 students by '25/'26. To reach this
primary goal, what we have done is we have outlined enrollment goals
by various market segments, right?
As you can see, there are high school graduates, Pima County
adult learners, those transitioning to dual enrollment, and other
populations. This is all outlined in your executive summary.
There are some other specific goals, as well. Increase
persistence by 1% annually, increase retention by 1%, and then
increase admission applications by 5% annually, and FAFSA, financial
aid applications, by 5% as well.
We have targets for each of these learner populations. We're
really kind of highlighting the importance and value of a college
education while breaking down those barriers for those who are really
striving for economic and social mobility.
The priorities really inform the strategies and tactics necessary
to achieve the goal, and I want to give some examples. For example,
strategies to support priority No. 1, which is increase and improve
college-wide outreach recruitment and marketing efforts to
effectively engage and support access to all learners.
What we are going to do here is implement a customer relations
management system across all college areas that interacts with
prospective students. Then also increasing prospective student
engagement and follow-up.
Another example, to support priority 2, which is to improve the
college transitioning onboarding and enrollment processes for all
learners, really to focus a lot more initiatives on encouraging and
assisting those adult basic education learners and high school
equivalent completers to transition into credit.
So each strategy in the SEMP is assigned to a college
administrator to ensure ownership and completion of that strategy and
then the associated activities and on the focus learner segments, and
we have performance indicators and timelines for implementation
across, over the whole life of the plan.
Many of the strategies are already implemented and ongoing and on
schedule. This is really a living document in which we will really
be adjusting over the course of the next five years.
With that, I want to now turn it over to Dr. Duran-Cerda who will
speak more specifically about the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Plan.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Thank you very much, Dr. Dori. Good
evening, Chairperson Ripley, members of the board, Chancellor
Lambert, colleagues and guests.
I'm very happy to delve a little bit deeper into the DEI plan.
As you know, we had a first plan in 2017 that was started to
acknowledge the establishment to address access and attainment gaps
experienced by learners in the entire community.
In that first plan, we accomplished, had a lot of
accomplishments. One was the establishment of the office and also we
hired Hilda Ladner, our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer.
Also across the college, we increased training and awareness
regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion. With faculty affairs, we
worked on a hiring framework with faculty to hire diverse faculty.
Also, we conducted a DEI climate assessment, and then also
established the immigrant and refugee student resource center.
So the second plan, this plan focused more, this is the next
phase, and it really addresses the findings from the DEI climate
survey that was conducted in 2021.
The recommendations from several Town Hall meetings that we had
with the community, different sectors, was very helpful in
establishing the second plan.
The plan focuses more on belonging as a strategy for access,
retention, and success for all members of the college community. So
that means that becomes DEI, as Dr. Dori said, is the lens that we
see through for all of our plans. It is aligned with our
institutional goals to double counts and double the completer counts
of Hispanic, Latino, Native American, Black, African American
learners by 2025.
It really becomes part of everyone's responsibility. Just like
enrollment is everybody's responsibility at the college, so is
diversity, equity, and inclusion.
I wanted to share also that the work that took place between
September of 2021 to May 2022 is thanks to Hilda Ladner, our
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, and a 25-member team of
employees and also students.
They worked on this plan and recommendations actually through
data, national best practices, a climate survey, Campus Pride Index
results, and recommendations of the DEI climate assessment team.
What you can see here, these are the priorities that the team
came up with for recommendations. The first one, as you see, is the
academic equity and student success.
The second one, campus climate and culture. Third, employee
development and institutional structure for diversity, equity, and
inclusion.
I'd like to provide an example of how we are going to be
measuring this. If we go into the next slide, you can see priority
1, we have the strategy example of how we are going to be looking --
this is just one strategy. There are several, but we wanted to share
an example with you.
So the strategies, top three recommendations from the Breaking
Student Barriers task force to address issues regarding prerequisites
and the gen ed learner routes, which act as barriers to persistence
at times.
Also, what are the activities, for example, apply DEI lens to
review data related to barriers and disaggregating the data as much
as possible. This includes working not only with the STAR office and
faculty and also our deans but also with the community.
We want to conduct an audit of policies related to barriers and
then do a general education redesign with a DEI lens. So the three
state universities have done their own gen ed refreshes, and it also
impacts the AGEC of the colleges at the community college level.
So everybody is basically looking again at the gen eds, and we
are too. We haven't seen them really done a deep dive in about seven
years.
Continuing with the example of who is responsible, it's the DEI
task force working with STAR and the breaking barriers leads. Also
the Bank of America NCII curriculum subgroup, which I charged a group
of faculty and administrators to look at, and they just provided some
recommendations, I think it was back in April, to the barriers group.
And of course the DEI task force with policy holders, having that
responsibility too.
Looking at KPIs, increasing retention and completion of our
Latino, Black, and Native American students, learners, which is
directly aligned to the SEMP, and then the timeline, fall of 2022 and
ongoing.
The timeline for the new DEI plan, strategic plan, is from 2022
to 2025. Each priority in the DEI plan has aligned strategies with
activities, assigned groups, and performance indicators and
timelines, as you see here, which is an example.
With that, I just wanted to provide some examples and see if you
have any questions regarding the DEI plan or the SEMP plan with Dr.
Dori.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you very much. We have about
five minutes left for the last item on this topic.
Dr. Dori, do we have Nic here? You are muted, Dr. Dori.
>> DR. DORI: I believe Nic is here. There she is. We are ready
for you.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Let me share my screen and I will get
started.
Chair Ripley, members of the board, Chancellor Lambert,
colleagues and guests. I'm here this evening to provide a very brief
update on Pima's first Climate Action and Sustainability Plan.
This plan was developed during 2021 through 2022 by a
cross-college team, and the content of the plan was informed by
faculty, students, community members, staff, and administrators.
Within the plan we are committing to four overarching targets of
the primary outcomes we are looking for at the end of the three years
when the plan concludes.
First, reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These are essentially
the sources of greenhouse gas emissions that are either generated
directly through our operations, such as fuel in college vehicles,
and also those greenhouse gases generated indirectly through, for
example, purchased electricity. That's something we commit to doing
during the lifetime of the plan.
We also seek to ensure that all learners understand the key
principles of climate action sustainability and can apply them in the
field in which they are trained.
We recognize as an education institution we need to focus on both
our own greenhouse gas emissions but also ensuring the students who
leave us and go into the world know how to bring climate-positive
practices into those fields.
We also apply for gold certification through the Association for
Advancement of Sustainability and Higher Education. This is a fairly
widely used certification system that enables institutions to meet
specified criteria and demonstrate that they meet those criteria and
that sustainability targets. This covers multiple different areas
across the institution. This is something we're looking to doing
during the plan.
Finally, we will ensure during the lifetime of the plan we
develop a five-year plan carrying us through to 2030 resulting in at
minimum a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This
specifically will lead to the completion of the strategic plan goal
which led to this original development work.
The targets, the outcomes we are seeking to reach, through the
plan we identify five priorities that contain the specific strategies
and actions that will be carried out by the college to see us be
successful on those targets.
We have within these energy reduction. This includes a number of
different things. Reducing our energy use but also looking into
expanding the use of renewable energy.
Climate change and sustainability in the curriculum. This seeks
to infuse climate awareness and sustainability in our courses, in our
programs, and this is kind of the key piece for where we'll meet that
(indiscernible) of the institutional targets.
I would note for this one, particularly important, this isn't
about credit programs only. This is about all offerings at the
institution, so credit and noncredit.
Priority 3, we focus on engagement and education. We have
already been working to establish relationships with the community
and to get active with the community in different climate-related
events, and we will expand and build on that during the third
priority.
Then priority 4, inventory our greenhouse gas emissions. This is
a somewhat dry, in a way, step. But it's a necessary step. We need
to know our baseline of our greenhouse gas emissions, carbon and
nitrogen. That will enable us to attach a specific numerical target
to the first target, a numerical value to the first target, so we can
commit openly, publicly, to exactly what we are going to be doing.
Then lastly, we seek to infuse climate action sustainability
college-wide. This includes activities ranging from establishing a
sustainability office through to a detailed focus on water resources.
This is a particularly important topic to the climate team, and
one we've discussed potentially adding a target in the area of water
use as we get into year 2 of the plan.
Details about strategy and actions are included in the plan which
is part of the board materials, should anybody wish to look in more
detail.
I would like to end by thanking the members of the climate
planning team. They have worked incredibly hard this year and done
really outstanding work. We have a very strong plan. It's ambitious
but achievable. It's going to really help the college position
itself to be a very climate-positive institution in the future. We
have that plan because of the hard work of everybody you see listed
here on this slide.
With that, that's the kind of high-level summary of the plan we
have in place. I'd be happy to answer any questions.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Any questions from the board on either
of these three topics?
Thank you so much for that. These three topics are near and dear
to the board. They are crucial. I know there is a lot of
behind-the-scenes work that's happening on a daily basis that aren't
even represented even a slice on these slides. Thank you for what
you're doing. Thanks for keeping the board updated. It's hugely
important to us. Thank you so much.
Without any other questions or discussion, the next item on the
agenda are reports by representatives to the board. We have five
minutes, and it looks like there is only one person that's here,
Staff Member Erika Elias.
>> Good evening, Chancellor Lambert, guests.
I have very few updates right now. The first update I have is
from the All College Council. A vote was taken on preferred designs
for the gender-neutral bathrooms. There is a lot of support for this
endeavor.
The second update that I have comes from student affairs. The
academic success counselors will be facilitating mental health
screenings once a semester to help connect students to mental health
services and resources.
This was already implemented this semester, and it was received
very well by students, and also staff members came and told us how
much they appreciated the efforts.
Those are the only updates I currently have. I hope everybody
has a good and safe summer. Thank you.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you so much, Erika. Hugely
important.
Lastly on the reports we have Chancellor Lambert. Chancellor,
you have the floor.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Thank you, Chairperson Ripley. I guess it's
the first time I stand in the way between all of us and the ending of
the meeting.
So with that said, I just want to say I'm proud of all of you for
what we have done over the last year and beyond. If you step back
and think about what we have accomplished and achieved over the
two-plus years, it's nothing short of amazing. So thank you all for
what you do.
I think tonight is a culmination of that when you saw Drs. Dori,
Duran-Cerda, and Richmond just present on three critical plans of the
college all starting to come together, but behind that is a lot of
individuals, Hilda being one of those key players on the DEI side.
Dr. Irene Robles-Lopez, and hopefully soon to be doctor, David
Arellano with the SEMP plans. Dr. Suzanne Desjardin, around that.
Nic's phenomenal leadership with the climate action plan. Speaks
volumes.
But if you go back, what you also see is an example of DEI being
integrated and infused into what we do. Each one of those plans have
a diverse representation of employees across the spectrum of the
college to make that happen. So that's what we mean by the
intersectionality, right? It's not like we will have more
individuals of color, more individuals of disability. It's like
that's not enough. It's like how do you integrate them into the
overall operation of the institution? That's where we are headed as
we speak. I think you saw some examples of that this evening.
I just want too say I'm proud of -- I want to thank the mayor,
being our graduation speaker. It's so phenomenal when your mayor is
so proud to talk about their community college. We are so lucky to
have her who also attended Pima and now also being willing to speak
proudly of her institution in this great community of ours.
I want to thank Dr. Bruce Moses for his service to the college.
I wish you the best, Bruce, as you move on to assume your first
presidency.
A small group of us had an opportunity to visit Raytheon, and we
got to experience their new immersive learning center. I don't know
that it's new, but it's newer. I think it starts to set a standard
of how we need to think about today and the future of what's going to
happen with work and starting to look at how we incorporate more of
this immersive learning pieces for our students as they enter into
this next stage of the 21st Century.
Also, I want to thank the police department under our Police
Chief Nieuwenhuis, their response recently following the tragedy of
Uvalde. We had an incident here locally. Fortunately it did not
turn out to be in any way a significant impact to individuals' lives.
That's because our officers were on-site, they were responsive, and
they addressed the problem.
I just want to thank all of our officers for what they do, and
sometimes they get overlooked, but when we need them, they were
there. So thank you.
Also, we just got approved to be a 2ndChance Pell site. This is
huge. This is going to allow us to offer Pell to incarcerated
individuals who are pursuing certifications in areas that have
employment opportunities when they get out.
So these are typically individuals within five years of release.
They are studying things to prepare them to come back into society
and reintegrate successfully. I'm just so proud we will be able to
offer that to individuals in our community.
Also, just to show an example of what Dr. Richmond just talked
about, you know, the curriculum being a key part of the
sustainability, I want to just do a shoutout to Nancy Spaulding in
our fashion design program, because they have already been leading
the way, partnering with Goodwill of Southern Arizona, creating a
fashion of sustainability partnership where students are learning how
to integrate all of that into fashion. It's phenomenal, and maybe
one day we can have Nancy do a great presentation for us in that
regard.
Also, I want to thank Phil and Christy and the team and Dan,
unfortunately I couldn't be at graduation, but I have heard they did
a phenomenal job, and I want to add my thanks to what they did.
Christy and her crew do an amazing job every year. I'm glad we can
start having on-site graduations again, and I wished I could have
been there.
Also, I want to just acknowledge Terry Robinson for a moment,
because he has been selected as the manager of the year for 2022 by
the Copper Chapter of the Institute for Public Procurement. We have
one of the leaders in public procurement right here at Pima Community
College.
Terry, I want to thank you, and I recognize it's not just about
Terry, it's about his team and what they do to make sure we run a
clean, efficient, effective process as we procure things that are
important to what we need here at Pima Community College. Thank you,
Terry.
Also want to recognize Dr. Irene Robles-Lopez, she has been
selected by the Victoria Foundation to be the Dr. Alfredo G. de los
Santos Junior Outstanding Latina of the Year.
Thank you, Irene, for what you do, and we are very fortunate to
have you part of the Pima team and family and to just represent us.
We are just lucky. We have outstanding employees of the college.
Yes, things can't be done by me alone. It's not about me. But
it's also about having a compelling vision. I think that through our
combined work together, we have put forth that compelling vision.
That's what we are running forward with. I think the support we are
hearing about really reflects that. You all are key to making that
happen.
Let me just close with just a few pieces. Sorry I couldn't be at
the last board meeting. That was the last night my father was alive.
I was just grateful that I could be there to see him. So thank you
all for allowing me to be away from all of you so I could be with him
one last time.
I also want to recognize the folks at Ventura. They are an
amazing group of individuals, and I wish them the best. I'm sorry
that I decided not to accept their position. I wish them the best of
luck as they go forward. They are also an exemplar college district,
just like Pima Community College is, so they have so many wonderful
assets. I think that we can learn from each other as we continue to
do better by our students and our respective communities.
With that, Chair Ripley, I just want to say thank you to all of
you again for the tremendous support and outpouring. The cards,
flowers from faculty, staff, it was overwhelming and very positive.
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
The last point I will make, and this has made a big difference
for me in the Ventura piece. I knew on that Tuesday before I got the
phone call that a tremendous amount of folks in Pima County were
working on a letter asking that I stay. That made a big difference
for me. But I also was contacted by the mayor that also made a big
difference for me. I think that speaks loudly about this great
community of ours.
That played a big role. I want to stay here until I retire.
That is my hope. So let's keep doing the great stuff we are doing
together.
Thank you all and please have a great summer. For those of you
who will be around, I'll look forward to working with you during the
break.
Good night.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Thank you so much, Chancellor, for your
remarks. Our hearts do go out to you, as well as they go out to
others who have lost family members here on this Zoom right now.
Just in the last week, as well.
This really concludes our board meeting for this school year.
The information items are posted for you to read at your leisure.
I wanted to give one last -- I know there are a million
shoutouts. The online team, I just finished my first online course,
I took Spanish 101 at Pima Community College. I did, let's just say
I passed, but it's very -- it's a great program.
I can see so much that goes on behind the scenes. It's a lot
harder than you think as far as teaching it, as far as being a
student, as far as all the work that gets put into it. But it's
worth it and it's wonderful. Without it, many people could not even
attend or get any kind of learning let alone certificates and
degrees.
Thank you, online, all the online folks and my profesora,
Jessica.
With that, is there any motion to include any action items or
information items for the next board meeting? If not, just keep in
touch and we will try and include them in September.
With that, would I like to adjourn this meeting. Thank you so
much.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Hold on one second.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Ms. Ripley? I know one of the items to
review we were going to have maybe a possibly an update reference to
the response from HLC or the report from HLC? Any inquiries or where
are we at?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: I believe we are still waiting.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Nothing has been received then?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: Chairwoman Ripley, my recommendation is
that we put it on the agenda for a future meeting.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: This is not on the agenda.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: It hasn't been agendized. We are still
waiting. They are taking a long time. I'm hoping we will absolutely
have it hopefully in the September agenda for future agenda items.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: One point of clarification, there had been
some discussion about having a study session before the end of June
to complete the bylaw process.
Is that still the pleasure of the board or would you rather
schedule that at the end of the summer?
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Board members, do you have any input on
that?
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: I think we should get it done.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I need some time.
>> MR. DEMION CLINCO: I think we should get it done as soon as
possible. I mean, that was what was discussed.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Anyone else?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: (Indiscernible.)
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: I didn't hear. It's overlapping.
Board Member Garcia, I couldn't hear.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I think we should wait until after the HLC
comes back with its findings before we approve the bylaws.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: That may or may not happen between now
and the 28th. Are we tentatively scheduling it for the 28th? If
not, we can regroup and schedule it at a later date.
How about a tentative 28 June schedule? Is that good for
everyone?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Tentative is okay.
>> MS. CATHERINE RIPLEY: Great. We will tentatively schedule it
for 28 June. Mr. Silvyn will try to coordinate that in time.
Other than that, any other future agenda items?
Okay. The next meeting is in September, and I now adjourn this
meeting of Pima Community College Governing Board.
Thank you very much, everyone. Be safe.
(Adjourned at 8:00 p.m.)
*********************************************
DISCLAIMER: THIS CART FILE WAS PRODUCED FOR COMMUNICATION
ACCESS AS AN ADA ACCOMMODATION AND MAY NOT BE 100% VERBATIM. THIS IS
A DRAFT FILE AND HAS NOT BEEN PROOFREAD. IT IS SCAN-EDITED ONLY, AS
PER CART INDUSTRY STANDARDS, AND MAY CONTAIN SOME PHONETICALLY
REPRESENTED WORDS, INCORRECT SPELLINGS, TRANSMISSION ERRORS, AND
STENOTYPE SYMBOLS OR NONSENSICAL WORDS. THIS IS NOT A LEGAL DOCUMENT
AND MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED, PRIVILEGED OR CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.
THIS FILE SHALL NOT BE DISCLOSED IN ANY FORM (WRITTEN OR
ELECTRONIC) AS A VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT OR POSTED TO ANY WEBSITE OR
PUBLIC FORUM OR SHARED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE
HIRING PARTY AND/OR THE CART PROVIDER. THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL
TRANSCRIPT AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON FOR PURPOSES OF VERBATIM
CITATION.
*********************************************
Gaming-platform-customerservice@julihui168.com
The-Crown-Casino-website-media@jaanchyi.com
皇冠博彩
365体育
单词风暴
Crown-betting-service@moggin.com
太阳城娱乐
bbin
Sun-City-Macau-info@adpkb.com
中国银行外汇牌价
Gaming-platform-help@foodservicebase.com
Crown-Sports-support@gl428.com
Sports-betting-careers@dedenfelanilaw.com
易客满
太阳城娱乐城
广州视窗
Sun-City-media@beijinghotspot.com
菠菜平台
太阳城娱乐城
第一比分网
单机游戏大全
深圳五洲医院针灸推拿科
365商城
上海小猪短租
6789网址大全
中国法律援助基金会
汕头百姓网
四川师范大学教务处
真笔字网名设计器
象山港论坛
78挂靠网
吉林大学珠海学院
911查询天气查询
站点地图
驾驶员考试网在线试题