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February 20, 2023, Governing Board Study Session...
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Madam Chair, I'd like to call up Dr. Dave
Bea to deliver the budget discussion this evening.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Chairperson Riel, members of the board,
Chancellor Lambert, colleagues and guests. My pleasure today to talk
a little bit to continue our conversation on budget development that
we started last month talking about in the lead-in to some pretty
important decisions that are going to be coming in the very near
future.
So what the goal is today is to sort of walk through general
parameters related to the budget, where we're at, what the
projections are with sort of the budget as is right now, and then the
lead-in to, okay, what variables does the board have to play with to
talk about upcoming decisions.
So to give some context, the first decision or the first two
decisions, there are two time-related decisions. First will be in
March at the next upcoming board meeting. There will be a proposal
on tuition and fees increases, should we get feedback to propose
that. And then the second will be related to the employee benefits
plan and premium structures. That will happen in March.
In April, usually April, sometimes May, we have a conversation
about capital projects, specific list of capital projects. The
preliminary budget then is put all together for the May board meeting
that then sets what we go out to the public in terms of providing
information for the public to come and give public comment in June.
So after tuition and part of this conversation today, we're going
to touch on the key variables, which will be tuition, property tax
levy, compensation, and then balancing the budget. So I'm going to
walk you through all those different points. Let me just get this
thing going.
I want to go through the slides relatively quickly. At the end,
what you can't tell on the slides is I actually have a model we can
play with. So we can sort of say, well, what would happen if we did
a $2 tuition increase and a 2% tax levy. It will do some
calculations for us so we can play around and see what that leaves
and what kind of position that puts us in. It's set up in a
three-year time frame so that we can sort of do a projection for the
next couple of years also.
So it's sort of building the budget from where we are at right
now and then adjusting it for revenue changes and expenditure changes
that we know about. Again, I will get into more detail in a second
in terms of some of those things.
We talked a little bit about expenditure priorities, revenue
projections last month. We talked a little bit about right-sizing.
I will get into a little bit more detail about that today, where that
detail, where those numbers came from, why we use those as rough
feedback mechanisms, metrics for the college, to make sure that we
are running a sound operation, that we are in line with peer
institutions, that sort of thing.
Again, I want to go through, get to the model as quickly as
possible, and then really stimulate conversation with the board so
that you can talk amongst yourselves, ask questions, that sort of
thing, get some feedback so that we know how to fold in some of the
decisions upcoming.
These should be familiar at this point. Key priority for this
year is we implemented a large change to our classification and
compensation structure this last year. We implemented it almost
completely. That is, we hired a firm, nationally known expert in
class and comp, to come in and review all of our positions, make
recommendations for salary schedules, and then place everybody on the
salary scales to try and tag the college's positions to market rates.
That's a really important factor, and there are ongoing
components to that. So the idea was with job descriptions, get them
tied to salary, national salary survey information, and then try to
match to get to the midpoint by an eight-year point at being at the
college. So if you were hired at the minimum of that grade scale,
that over the course of the next eight years you would move along
that target to get to the midpoint by eight years.
So that's tying to the market average so that someone who is at
the college in the position with eight years is getting measured
against the market average for that position. So that's how we are
making sure that we are paying appropriately for the positions.
Again, that's important for us to attract and retain employees. That
was a significant investment for the college.
Last year the increases averaged well over 8% in total. To move
people up into that point, so what you said, the way we did it is if
someone was at the minimum before that study was done, and then it
said, okay, your market midpoint, you're here, you're at $40,000, the
market midpoint is $50,000, so that would be after eight years you
would expect to be at $50,000, so because a lot of people at the
college were hired at the minimum and were at the minimum for years,
because of a number of budget-related reasons, that then to get them
to that eight-year point would be going from 40,000 to $50,000.
I understand the board is interested in more detail about the
class comp study, so we will set up some time at a study session to
get into that. That will be a good lead-in to the compensation
conversations as well.
So when I say that the average increase was about 8% overall,
that meant that a lot of people were more than 8% or were about 8%
blow where their market comparison point was. Then when I said we
got almost all the way to implementing the recommendations, what we
did is we were able to get people all the way to the midpoint, if
that was where their years of experience were, and then we capped it
at 12 years of experience.
So there is a cap, and that's one of the ongoing obligations that
we are going to have to talk about and what we were talking about
with the AERC groups, the employee representative groups, is what are
the priorities going forward. One of them that I think is a minimum
expectation is that since we put the cap on 12 years of experience is
that with another year of experience, we want to move that cap up a
year at least, and then there are other priorities in terms of
lifting the cap further and so forth.
When we implemented it, it was such a big lift, we put a cap on
at a relatively high level but there is a cap. So trying to uncap it
and move people up at the high end of the salary scales will be one
of the priorities that we talk about and we are talking about with
the employee groups.
Because we are tying to years of experience and position, that
now the college has an annual obligation sort of baked in that we
want to create as an ongoing part of the budget, that for every year
of experience that we have now, overall that costs the college about
2.5% in terms of what a personnel, an increase to the personnel
budget is about 2.5% to move people up one year of experience.
So again, assuming that we continue to give that recognition for
a year of experience, we want to have a salary pool of at least about
a 2.5% increase to be able to do that first.
I will talk about that when I start showing numbers that I have
that baked into the budget, like that's a starting point, because
that's sort of an ongoing obligation. Then anything above that is
what we will be talking about, how much more should we try and do
above that.
Completing capital construction, that's sort of built in. If
it's an already approved capital project, we have money already set
aside for it. There is ongoing deferred maintenance-type obligations
we want to fold into the budget. Right now the budget is set pretty
much year over year for the ongoing deferred maintenance to be flat
year over year. So it's about the same increase or the same amount
is allocated in the budget in the upcoming projections that I'm going
to show you as are in the current-year budget, which is enough to
keep pace with deferred maintenance but not make good progress.
So that's going to be something that in the next year or so we
will have more conversations as we fine-tune and get a new deferred
maintenance model in place that we will talk to the board about
ongoing, do we want to ratchet that up and start investing more into
our deferred maintenance on an ongoing basis, but right now we are
starting at sort of keeping things where they were. The current
year, that's enough for us to keep in a decent place with deferred
maintenance.
Then with growth areas, if it's something new that the college
wants to do, shifting resources is what we really try to prioritize.
So what can we not do as much of anymore, what can we shift
resources, people, working on some of the priorities, and doing that
over time rather than just adding, adding, adding. We are not in a
position with our enrollment to add much. So it's really
reallocating.
We do have money in the budget every year. We talked a little
bit about reserves for things that pop up during the year. It's
called the strategic initiatives fund. So we can, during the course
of a year, we do have money available. It's over a million dollars
on an annual basis that we can put into key priorities or things that
pop up during the year. So we can be responsive.
It is a budgeted line item, so we are not in a place where we are
just like desperate if something pops up. If there is an opportunity
that we can take advantage of, there are resources we can tap into
for that.
Just to recap where we are at from a revenue standpoint. These
are the key revenues that hit our operating side of the budget.
Tuition right now, with where enrollment is at, if we increase
tuition by a dollar per credit hour, that translates into an increase
revenue of about $350,000.
Just to give some context, I have some information related to the
Arizona community colleges. We will have more information when we
take tuition to the board at the March meeting. But right now, they
are proposing -- I think that there may be one or two that are
looking to keep tuition flat, although we are calling it zero if they
haven't committed at this point. So a lot of them are also in the
same point of conversation with their boards.
So my guess is the ones that even say zero will probably have
tuition increases. Two colleges are doing larger tuition increases
than have happened at any point that I have been at the college and
probably in history.
Maricopa is increasing their tuition by, I think it's $12 per
credit hour. That's an enormous -- a large increase for Maricopa in
the past was $5 per credit hour. This is recognizing -- there are
two reasons why this is happening. They are recognizing that for a
number of years they kept tuition flat, and that creates ongoing
problems because you don't have that additional revenue built up over
time. They have an expenditure limitation problem, and tuition
revenue is outside of expenditure limitation. So they are looking to
deal with some of their budgetary constraints by increasing tuition.
The other one that is $25 per credit hour is when COVID hit,
Central Arizona College, which is Pinal County, they dropped their
tuition. They used the federal financial relief money to compensate
for reducing their tuition to try and bolster revenue.
They are now undoing that decision. It didn't actually result in
huge improvements for them. It had a temporary one-time effect. It
didn't have a lasting effect in terms of their enrollment, and now
they are undoing it by over the course of two years planning to get
back to where they were. So they are having a big $25 per credit
hour increase this year.
It's a little bit skewed. Normally over time the Arizona
colleges increase from zero to $5 per credit hour is like almost
always what happens. At Pima we have increased up to $5 per credit
hour. We have done that I think three times. Just to give you a
little bit of context, in fiscal year '16, we increased it $5. '17
was $3. '18 was $3. '19 was a dollar. '20 was $2. '21 was $2.50.
Zero increase in '22. In '23 it was $2.
And that's very typical with going back in time when the fiscal
crisis happened and the state reduced the budget to the college, that
was the other time when we did $5 increases. So this college has a
long history, long commitment to keeping tuition increases as low as
possible.
So that's tuition. Property taxes range from an increase from
$1.8 million, and we have the capacity to go up as high as an
additional $7 million. That's because the college did not increase
its tax levy a couple of years. So we maintained the ability to go
all the way to the tax levy amount.
Last year we increased it by 4%. That was the board, the
previous board talked about we were at the point where we could do
two years in a row of 4% to catch back up to where we had been for
not doing it two years. So the conversation was, the lead-in was the
current year would be a 4% increase, and then the idea was this next
year, this year, would be a 4% increase.
Obviously that decision is not a commitment. That was budget
discussion in terms of long-range or medium-range planning. That's
what the board will be talking about a little bit later.
So the range there is an increase of $1.8 million, that's for
growth in new property, to 7 million. That goes all the way to our
levy max.
Then other revenues, I talked about this at the last meeting,
between Prop 207 and investment income, we are expecting an increase
of about $1.6 million, which is going to help, for sure, with the
budget.
Talking about a couple of like scenario, from a scenario
perspective, I mean, outline it in the context of first scenario
would be we don't increase those discretionary, don't increase
tuition, we don't increase the tax levy.
So we get levy neutral. You assume the growth in new property,
but that's it. That means you don't have to go out to the taxpayers,
don't have to publish anything. You just assume that additional $1.8
million, but there is not an additional tax increase. Anything above
that $1.8 million we have to go through what's called a
truth-in-taxation process.
The next scenario is something in the middle. That is we would
increase the property tax by 2%. That would be again historically
the norm. We used to do that almost every year, other than a couple
years ago, like I said, there were two years where we didn't increase
the tax levy. There was one other year where we went 1% rather than
2%. Going back in time, that 1% was in 2017. The next year we did
3%. So we caught back up the next year. And then in 2021 and '22 we
did the zeros, and then that's again why we have our levy max at a
bit higher level.
Scenario C is sort of maxing out your revenue scenario, right?
That would be increasing all the way to the levy max. You can only
do that one time. After that the board then could only increase it
by 2% a year, but the board can still increase it by 2% a year. It's
growth plus 2% a year all the way up to your levy max. Once we are
at the max it's just an additional 2% per year.
We talked a little bit about right-sizing and moving resources.
I talked with the board about metrics, both back in I think early
December, and then we talked a little bit about it a month ago. The
idea we have a number of metrics that ensure that we have good
stewardship of public funds in terms of making sure the institution
is appropriate for the size of the enrollment we have.
The metrics that we have in place to do that are expenditures per
enrollment. We also look at staffing per enrollment. So looking at
those, because enrollment has dropped so significantly over the last
number of years, our ratios that we, those tracking metrics are out
of whack.
I will talk a bit more in a second about that. Ongoing
challenges, just to outline that, again, I will get back to the
struggling, impacts of the struggling enrollment outlook, the
potential revenue growth, I just told you property tax is our biggest
revenue source.
Prop 207 had been fantastic, but we can't expect the growth to be
like that in the future. It will be a stable revenue source for the
college. It will not continue to grow exponentially. We can
probably expect that maybe there will be an additional couple hundred
thousand dollars a year, but it won't be an additional 5 to $700,000
a year or something like that going into the future.
Challenges at the college. We are not efficiently structured.
We have a lot of locations for the size of our enrollment. We will
have that as a continued conversation with the board as we sort of
work out the second, third year of this three-year plan as we go in
the coming months.
Not all of that is critical to decide for that year one. We
don't have to solve all of the world's problems in year one. We have
to start thinking about the next couple of years, though.
We can't keep our eyes blind to the future, but we also don't
have to be completely reliant on solving the world's problems in one
year. So we are trying to plan it out over time. How do we get
ourselves to be a really efficiently properly sized institution for
our enrollment both in terms of the revenues coming in and in terms
of our expenditures in the enrollment over time.
Some of the ratios that we look at is the full-time student
equivalent to staff ratio. We started talking about this in the last
year. Overall, the college is a little bit under 12 to 1 in terms of
the staff to the number of full-time student equivalents to staff.
Historically that is a very low number, like as in it's bad.
From 2012 to 2014, when enrollments were far larger than they are
now, the average was around 20 to 1. So over time, it has degraded.
Again, that's mostly because there are two things that were
happening. One is enrollment went down significantly over that
period of time, most dramatically in the last couple of years. The
other thing is that while we did reduce a number of positions in the
'15 to '19 range, in that time period, we did have a budget reduction
plan that was related to expenditure limitation, and it was a
three-year plan to reduce positions.
We reduced a number of positions at that point. But when COVID
happened, we held, we wanted to make sure that we had a lot of
stability and we did not lay off people and we did not reduce
positions as a result of that. As a result of that now, our ratios
are heavy on the staffing side.
Another one that we have had in place for a number of years in
terms of a target metric, again, these aren't metrics that are
absolute. These don't turn into, oh, you will be 14.000 and that
means you are going to cut 102 positions exactly. It is, okay, we
are high. How do we come up with a plan to start reducing positions.
Historically we have done it almost exclusively through attrition.
That is when people retire or they leave to other jobs figure out how
to fold those responsibilities into the college and not hire for all
those positions and eliminate the position and save the money from
the budget going forward. We reduced about 200 positions doing that
when we had the expenditure limitation challenges.
Again, we haven't done that in some time. Right now it's been
more reallocating positions. When someone retires, a lot of times
you need that position so it's been filled. But then there is always
a constant conversation with folks to try and go, okay, where do we
need positions, okay, online has been growing. Dual enrollment has
been growing. How do we move positions that are vacant into those
areas rather than adding positions.
In terms of the staffing, there is an instructional faculty ratio
that has been used as a target metric since around 2015, if I
remember, I'm guessing, I don't remember exactly if that's the year,
but it was around that time frame. The way that that came to be is
we wanted to come up with a way to track the number of full-time
faculty positions we had for our enrollment.
So we went in and took a look at national data, at the IPEDS
data, and looked at our peer institutions, and basically came up with
a number that our peer institutions for their full-time equivalents,
and this is controlled for only general fund operations, so it does
not include adult education, does not include contract education. So
it's just the traditional-type education.
We looked at the other, our peer institutions, and the average
for our peer institutions was 50 to 1. So we looked at that. We
didn't like magically make that the number, though.
We looked at what does that number mean at the college
historically, and looking at the college historically, that number
was a number that we hit, for all intents and purposes, in 2014.
Now, remember, our enrollment has been declining since our peak in
2011, and so at a certain point in time, it crossed over where the
number of full-time instructional faculty positions we had was 50 to
1, was 2014. That's when we hit that number.
There is another reason why that ratio is helpful to the college,
because that ensures that depending on our enrollment, if our
enrollment grows, it tells us, okay, we need to add full-time
instructional positions. It also does another thing, which is
ensures that if we hold steady with our ratio full-time faculty to
adjunct faculty, because if we are holding one of those constant,
right, full-time instructional faculty to full-time student
equivalents is held constant, that means that when you're growing
you're also adding adjunct faculty at the same relative ratio.
So it does a couple of things at the same time. Again, it isn't
a number when we came up with that number that was like shocking
historically. Like I said, it was like -- and we came up with this
number, actually, I said it was like in 2015, it was a little bit
later than that, like 2017. It was, yeah, actually that makes sense.
This was actually a pretty good period in time with the college.
When we were in 2011, and our enrollment was at 23,000 FTSE, we
did not have enough full-time instructional faculty at the time.
From this ratio, it would have said we would have had to add about 50
positions, something like that. I'm going off memory, but it was
adding quite a few more positions.
Now, there is a reason for that, but that's history and we will
talk about that another time sometime, but anyway...
So hopefully that gets at where those ratios came from, and so
they are tied to national data for peer institutions, but we also
-- we never take that as sort of an exclusive answer. We also look
internally and go, does that actually make sense at the college?
The staffing ratio information for national comparisons, we are
extremely high from a staffing standpoint to enrollment compared to
peer institutions nationally.
There is a big reason, there are a number of reasons for that,
though. It doesn't become an absolute. It becomes, well, we're
high, and here it kind of proves it.
One of the reasons is because there are some states where things
like HR are done on a statewide level. HR, meaning class comp
decisions or information technology infrastructure, things we have to
manage in-house, employee benefits, for example, we have to manage
that in-house. That makes us inefficient.
But the truth of the matter is the fact that we have so many
different locations and the fact that we have shrunk so much since
our peak, we are very inefficient at the college, no question about
it.
So it's sort of like, okay, what's a good measure, let's try and
head towards that, but it's never intended and it has never been an
absolute that told you definitively, we are cutting 545. It's never
been used that way. Again, it's more like how can we try and head in
that direction, have a plan through attrition to shrink the size of
our staff, that sort of thing.
Okay, this is a recap, and I'm about to get into the more fun
stuff. Again, to the levy information is if we go all the way to the
levy max, it adds 7.2 million. Then 2%. This is looking at the
three-year outlook. So if we went 4% that first year, again, I told
you that then keeps us we are at the max, we can only do 2% after
that. That gives you an idea that it's a one-time additional $3
million essentially.
What year that happens is something that's not yet to be
determined but that's so that could move, depending on how you
decided to do it, but it's basically 7.2 million for 4 would be how
it would play out if you did the levy max in the first year.
Then the moderate increase, again, a $3 tuition increase is
historically normal for the college to do. We never like to increase
tuition, but that's a fairly moderate increase, particularly given
all the additional costs the college has had to absorb in the last
year. That would be about $1.1 million of additional revenue.
It is also important to note that one of the things when our
credit rating agencies take a look at the college related to our
revenue bonds, the revenue bonds are a commitment on tuition, on
nonproperty tax-based revenues. So that's why it's called a revenue
bond. It's other revenues with our primary other revenue being
tuition.
So as enrollment declines, that puts pressure on that revenue
source that is that commitment that we are using to pay those
obligations going out into time. As enrollment has declined, our
credit ratings have held steady because of strong management
perspective and good financials and good financial performance and
management approaches.
One of the things they have hinted at is as enrollment has
declined, if we don't increase tuition, that might be a sign that we
are not interested in keeping a healthy balance in terms of the
revenue proportion that is, again, because we are committing some
amount -- it's only $4 million, so it's not a major commitment on an
annual basis, but there is a commitment on an annual basis for
tuition revenue to go there.
So credit-rating agencies, if there isn't a moderate increase in
tuition and enrollment stays flat or goes down, they might find that
a little bit concerning and might drop their credit rating a little
bit. I'm not trying to panic you. It isn't something to panic over,
but it is something be aware of that if that does factor in to how we
are looked at as a college.
Okay. This one, if you got a chance to take a look at it, this
is what the model looks like if you bake in all of our ongoing
obligations. That is the thing that I talked about. Everybody gets
another year of experience. We move people up. We move that cap up
one year. That is built into this from a salary standpoint.
It does not include any increases for adjunct faculty. A
percentage increase for adjunct faculty is around $120,000, give or
take, something like that, so it's not huge, but that's something
that the college has also made a lot of effort in recent years to
make sure our adjunct faculty rate is competitive. So that's
something we would prioritize as an increase going forward, so think
about a little over $100,000 for every percentage increase there.
So it doesn't include that. And it doesn't include any increase
to people other than a year of experience, right? So there are a lot
of people at the cap, above their target point. So that would be
holding everybody flat, just giving people a year of experience is
what this model looks like. It includes a little additional money
for contractual obligations, utility increases, particularly system
licenses, costs, things like that, that go up each year.
So there is a little bit of additional money on the operating
side for that, but it's a fairly moderate increase in terms of how we
are looking at it. This is sort of the minimalist budget where we
are at now. If we don't reduce anything but keep doing what we are
doing now, that's what this thing shows.
Looking at this, it also, as I mentioned, the first built-in
assumption is this does not have a tax levy increase. This is just
getting the new growth and it does not have a tuition increase in it.
So again, if we don't do anything, this is kind of what it looks
like.
So we have revenue, we have revenue potential on the upside. It
also doesn't have reductions in it, so that's another thing that we
will have that we can talk about.
So you notice, though, sort of the baked-in starting point
without increasing revenues is it shows that the next year's budget
is about $1.6 million worse than where we are at right now. Position
equivalency, that's just kind of put, to humanize it a little bit,
that $1.6 million is if you said reduce by that much, we want to have
a budget cut of $1.6 million. We don't want to increase revenues at
all. We want to make it up in a reduction, or board says find $1.6
million in reductions, that would be about 20 positions, give or
take.
And think about it. The college cannot just reduce on just the
operating side and not personnel. Our operating is far more
committed and structured. There is not a lot of discretionary money
in our operating budget.
So think about it. If you did say that we should do a reduced
by, say, a million dollars, figure about 900,000 of that is probably
going to have to come out of personnel. So some can come out of
operating, but it's mostly going to be coming out of personnel.
So this is kind of what it looks like going forward. I will
start with the frightening proposition, but again, I told you that's
before we do anything on the revenue side. Then this model is the
one I have built to play with. This is a static one, just so we
could have it in this presentation.
What this one does, so that model I just showed you, that version
I just showed you was like that scenario A, right. That's without
increasing tuition, without increasing the tax levy, that's what that
looks like.
This is now structured to be much more what the college typically
does, so this is increasing the tax levy by 2% and increasing tuition
by $3. As you can tell, that makes a significant difference in terms
of the bottom line. In addition to that, it also gives us about 2%
of salary pool money to distribute, to handle the things above the
year of experience.
So that is the employee groups are going to have certain
priorities. That would give us money for addressing some of the
priorities, moving up, moving the cap up, giving a minimum increase
to people who are already above their target point, so they are not
going to get a year of experience. And adjunct faculty pay.
So it would give a pool increase of about $2.6 million for us to
do, to distribute in various ways that we will have conversations
with employee groups and then we'll have conversations with the
board, just a high-level number of what that would shake out to look
like. Overall that would be a personnel increase of about 4%. As
you see at the bottom, that's still a net negative, about $500,000 is
not too big of an issue in terms of how big our budget is.
So it's a decent starting point at least to think about. That's
scenario B. Obviously anything we go above that in terms of tapping
into either tuition increases above the $3 increase or the tax levy
increase above 2%, that then would give us more money to do into
bigger pool increases, because as you can imagine, a 2% salary pool
above a year of experience is not actually very much when you're
factoring in inflation and where we are at right now.
Again, I talked a little bit about the next steps in terms of
budget, and then I will pull up our model and you guys can ask
questions and we can play around a little bit. We are going to take
a proposal to the board in March for tuition. Again, that's why we
are looking for feedback tonight, sort of what it looks like, how the
board feels about a potential tuition increase -- obviously if we
don't increase tuition, we don't need to take that to the board --
any increase that we have to take in March so that we can get it in
in time for the schedule of courses that goes out in April for fall
semester.
So we want to get any tuition increase decided before people
start enrolling in fall classes. That's the timeline. That's why
March becomes important.
Then I mentioned employee benefits contracts. There is an
increase in employee benefits costs. We will know a little bit more,
waiting for information tomorrow, we will give more information to
the board. We are not looking to push that on to employees. We are
looking to have the college absorb that increased cost within this
structure. That's built into what I have already showed you.
It might be as high as about $500,000, something like that. In
the context of health benefits, that's pretty normal. Thinking
anything under a million dollars in a given year is good for the
college or is acceptable.
We have done a good job over time with our wellness program, with
self-insuring our health insurance, keeping those increases as low as
possible, and we actually have not pushed those increased costs to
employees, which is what many other employers have done over the last
number of years. So we want to sort of keep that commitment going.
I find it to be objectionable if you give a 1% increase to
employees and then turn around and hit them on the employee benefits
costs, where it's a bigger increase than that, that's really not a
great way to approach things.
April there will be a study session. We will talk more about
compensation at that point, more about the budget at that point.
Then I mentioned May and June, what happens in those time frames.
So I have provided some additional information. I'm not going to
go through all of that stuff. Again, this is sort of just to show
where the calculations come from, unless the board has questions on
those.
I will pull up the little model, we will play, and then I'm happy
to entertain any questions you all may have.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: It would be helpful for me that when you do
a comparison of what the other college districts are going to do with
the tuition increase you would show what the tuition is.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: That is typically how we do it. Sorry we
didn't show that in here. We are third-highest right now, but we are
very close to the next four or five. But we will have that
information. We will have the chart that will show that to you in
March. Absolutely.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: And then what a dollar, $2, $3 increase in
tuition would be percentage-wise compared to what they are paying.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: We are close to 100, we are about 90ish
dollars, so $1 increase is a little over a percent.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Did you mention what the estimated valuation
increase would be? Is it taxing?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yeah. I'm looking to see if it's got it in
there. So the taxable valuation of Pima County property, so this
slide shows it, if you can see that.
Yeah, I can't control that. Someone else is controlling that
screen. Marcos, can you put the chart up on the smaller TV? There
you go.
So this is current year net assessed value. This is the upcoming
year net assessed value. So there is an increase in the assessed
valuation of Pima County property. It's about half a billion
dollars, give or take. That's in thousands. So it's $10 billion
worth of assessed value for the property.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So that's 5%?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: It's a 5% increase in the valuation.
The growth in new property is like 1. -- let's see if it has it
in here. It's 1.7%, I think.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So do we know what percentage of that is new
property as opposed to --
>> DR. DAVID BEA: 1.7% growth is the growth figure. That's what
really matters to us. That's what translates into the $1.8 million
that you see at the bottom here.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I'm not making myself clear.
So part of that valuation increase is going to be new property?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yeah.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So the old property, what percentage
increase -- are you getting where I'm going?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yes. I will be happy to get that. I don't
know it off the top of my head. It's gone up some obviously, I mean,
if you just do the math in your head.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: It would be helpful for me to know the
current taxing people how much percentage increase they will have
just because they were in their homes another year.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Great. We always show that before the tax
decision. When I say that tax levy can go up by 2%, when I keep
saying that 2% number, that all things being equal, because there are
some things that happen that aren't equal, but all things being
equal, that would mean that there would be a 2% increase to their tax
rate for the same property year over year. That's what a 2% increase
means.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I understand that, but it won't be a 2% tax
increase when they look at the bottom line on their tax bill?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Actually, it will. The way that it works, the
assessment values go up. I'm going to try and do this.
Last year you have a property that's worth $100,000. It gets
assessed at $110,000 this year. That's a 10% growth, right? The tax
rate that we charge would actually go down so that your increase in
your bill would go up by 2%. It wouldn't go up by 10% plus 2%, if
that makes sense.
I will map that out for you. I will show you how that works. We
adjust our tax rate downward, because we are looking to get a dollar,
a specific dollar amount from all of our property. I'll say it a
different way.
If there was no growth in new property and assessment values
stayed the same, and the board adopted this 2% increase, everybody's
taxes would go up 2%, okay?
Different scenario. Everybody's tax valuations, again, no new
property, no new properties happen, the property values went up by
10% and the board approved that 2% increase, the tax rate would
actually go down a lot, because what would happen is year over year,
we are just trying to get that same 2% additional from each property,
from the same value, the same controlled value property, if that
makes sense.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: If we put 2% on it, it increased 10%, what
would the net be?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: So all other things being equal, it would be a
net increase of 2%. If they were paying $100, they would be paying
$102. That's how it would play out. Even though the value of their
house went up a lot, the tax rate would go down and we would just get
another 2% on that property.
The only time that that doesn't play out is if there is a
distribution change in the valuation where your property and my
property, my property goes up a lot more than your property in a
given year, my taxes will be a little bit higher because of that.
But we don't control that. That's Pima County assessor or that's the
way it works.
We just set what the tax rate is to get a dollar certain. And
the assessment value of the property, if it goes up a lot, just means
the tax rate is going to go down.
I will show that to you come in March -- sorry, either in April,
I'd be happy to show it to you in April, and I will show you how it's
gone over years so you can see how the tax rates go down when
assessment values go up. I just don't have that on hand where I can
show it to you. I can just tell you.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: That would be helpful.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Hey, Maria, Wade has like four more
questions, and then we will take your questions.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Go ahead. Let him finish.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: How does the credit rating affect us?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: What it would do, it would have a marginal or
negligible impact. I mean, it would be not great if it went down.
We don't have any -- we are not planning to borrow any more money.
If we went out to borrow more money, a lower credit rating means we
would have to pay more in interest. We would be less desirable so we
would have to pay more --
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I understand that, but I guess my question
is do we have debt that we are paying off?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yes, we have revenue bonds where the annual
payment is about $4 million a year, but they are fixed. So it
doesn't have an immediate effect on our currently existing debt.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: And what are they for?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: The revenue bonds are for the centers of
excellence projects, so the automotive building, Advanced
Manufacturing building, some renovations related to science buildings
at West Campus.
So all of the showcase buildings save aviation, because the state
funded that. All the major improvements in our facilities in the
last number of years came from revenue bonds proceeds.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So we can issue revenue bonds without
passing a bond?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Correct. There is a cap on how much we can
do, but we do have a fair amount of capacity to issue more revenue
bonds.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: When you showed the model that had -- I'm
calling it a step. What do you call it? Longevity?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Year of experience.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Year of experience. What is the average
increase in salary for that?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: It's about 2.5% on average. It does vary.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So in the first scenario, did that include
decreasing the number of positions because our student/teacher ratio
is high, low?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: It doesn't include any decrease in regular
positions. The one thing that we do do that's sort of on the side,
but we have a model for how much money we put for adjunct faculty.
So that's our variable labor force, if you will, so if enrollment
goes down, we reduce the number of classes we teach, and that's
taught by adjunct faculty.
The difference between those two is fairly small in terms of the
variability. The amount of tuition revenue that we get for adding an
additional class covers roughly what the cost of an adjunct faculty
position is. It's a little bit of savings if -- if enrollment goes
down, we pull money back from the campuses or from the departments.
We save money if we don't teach as many classes.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: We are talking about those 200 positions --
>> DR. DAVID BEA: When I said the 200 positions, those are
regular positions we reduced in the past.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: But we're not going to reduce any of those
even through attrition?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: We are not planning to, but we are going to
have conversations with the board as part of this three-year planning
perspective, because I think you are going to see that we probably
need to do that.
That's what you see going forward when you start seeing these
negatives out in the future, you start going, the budget, if our
enrollment doesn't grow, we probably need to reduce the size of our
staff, and we will continue that conversation.
But this budget for the upcoming year does not include any
reductions at this point.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So we are assuming that we are going to have
an increase that would reduce that ratio? Increase the ratio?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Increase in --
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Student/faculty ratio.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: So right now our enrollment is up a little bit
year over year, so our ratios are getting slightly better. They are
still bad. But it would be holding steady at the low. It's not
making a lot of progress. It's not making progress towards a 15 to
1. It would be basically holding steady at the 12 to 1 number.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I guess my question is on that first
scenario with no property tax increase and no tuition tax increase,
that budget does not have any attrition for the number of faculty,
and if we don't have an increase in student numbers, then that
student/faculty ratio would stay the same?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yes, correct.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So we would not be increasing it, even
though we are low?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: When I said increasing, I meant like at the
margins, because enrollment is slightly higher than the current year,
or this year's enrollment is slightly higher than -- that's
technicality. Yes, for all intents and purposes, yes, I agree with
you completely.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So these budget projections are based on
what enrollment increases?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: These are flat. These assume flat enrollment.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So what happens if we get more students? Do
we have a formula that --
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Yeah. I referenced the adjunct faculty that
we have a model -- the way the budget, and you won't see it in here
anywhere in these numbers, but what we do is we have a growth
reserve, so we have money set aside.
We put tuition a little high, and we have expenses a little high.
That's on the occasion that if enrollment goes up, we will be able to
add classes for those students. So we build capacity for it, but
it's not in anything that I'm sort of talking about here. But we do
have capacity to grow if enrollment goes up.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: It would be helpful for me to see, I'm
confused again what we call the one-year longevity, the percentage
that the average employee gets and the percentage that we have to put
into getting everybody to the midpoint, and the percentage of the
fringe benefit increase if we assume all the additional costs.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Okay.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I'd like percentages.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Sure. No problem. Definitely in the April
study session we will get into that compensation conversation, but
the benefits conversation will have that for March.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Great. That's all for now.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay, Maria.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: It's my turn now?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Yes, it is.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Wade, thanks for all those questions you
asked. I really appreciate that. So my questions are probably more
simplistic.
Dr. Bea, what I'd like to ask is when you built the ratio for the
student and faculty ratio, do you guys take into consideration that
it takes more time for a faculty member to teach online classes and
that the faculty has to supervise the adjunct faculty?
You know, it seems like, anyway, from what I have heard, learned,
anyway, is that they are way overloaded. So then my other question
is when you're talking about staff per student ratio, are you also
including the administrators, not just faculty? Because as you know,
we are heavy on administrators.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Okay.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: How is that going to be adjusted?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Okay. Any other questions?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: No, that's it.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Okay. First question related to there is
conversation going on related to faculty work, expectations and so
forth. That's going to be a multi-year conversation, but there are
conversations particularly related to department chairs.
Anything that I'm talking about is year over year, same thing in
terms of expectations of what the workload is. There is not an
additional workload related to it. But it's not a reduction of
workload either.
In terms of the staffing numbers, the ratio that I talked about
does include administrators so that when I'm saying that going back
we are at a 12 to 1 ratio, that includes all staff. If you go down
to a 15 to 1, administrators would be in that.
I will point out a couple of things that are also important to
understand. The college in 2011 had -- actually, it was a little bit
before. The peak administrator number for the college was 64. We
now have 45 administrator positions. There have been big
administrator reductions over the years, consolidating operations,
the most notable of which is there used to be presidents at each
campus. There is no longer. There is one person overseeing that
operation.
There is a lot of other consolidation that has happened. There
used to be a vice chancellor of HR, used to be a vice chancellor of
facilities, for example. Those are now lower-level positions. So
that's also a reduction in costs.
Looking at IPEDS numbers for management positions, slightly
different definition of what a Pima administrator is and a management
position, so there are more management positions at Pima, because
that includes directors and a couple of other positions.
Looking at IPEDS information, the college is slightly high versus
our peer institutions. Not much. So, for example, our management as
a percentage of total salaries and wages, percentage of total
personnel costs essentially, is 12%. Average for two-year
institutions is -- we are at 11.8%. Average two-year institutions,
11.7%. Other peer institutions, around 11%. So it's in the
ballpark.
In terms of management as total expense, also it's in the
ballpark. We are not particularly heavy in terms of management or
administrators, largely because we have reduced a lot of it over
time.
In terms of savings over time, administration is often a target
for reductions. It's kind of a false -- it's a false target, because
the percentage of salaries that go to administrators is about 6% of
what we are talking about. It's a very small slice of the pie. And
it is, again, we have reduced significantly from the peak at the
college. We are a lot leaner in terms of administrators.
But as Board Member Garcia points out, they are in the ratio. So
if we shrink as a college significantly, you probably also shrink a
little bit in management, because you have fewer people that you are
supervising, there are fewer responsibilities so can you streamline
management as well.
I'm not saying no to that. I'm saying historically we have and
it's included in the ratio, but that ratio is actually not that far
out of whack versus our peers.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I have one more. You don't have to answer
it now. When you present the other data that Chairperson Wade asked
for -- I'm sorry. You're the vice-chair.
But anyway, if you could include on the bond money, revenue bond
money, we had a master plan, it was very specific as to how it was
going to be spent, okay. You didn't mention the fact that that
revenue money also included the hotels. So if you could just give us
a complete list in the future of how that money is being spent.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Sure. And we provide that information to the
board on a pretty routine basis. The Finance Audit Committee saw
that information last week, and I think we will share exactly the
same information with the board -- actually, I think we probably have
time to put it in the agenda, put it in as an information item for
the board.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Dr. Bea, sorry, but it's not real specific
as to the total amount of the revenue bond and then all the expenses
that have occurred with it where it's been spent. I haven't -- I
mean, I guess I don't understand it.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Okay. I'm happy to provide that information,
and if you want additional information, I'd be happy to clear that
up, as well.
Revenue bonds, projects, were about $65 million. We have spent
all but around 10 to 11 of that now. We are finishing up the
projects and spending on the revenue bonds. On an annual debt
service, it's around 4 million, a little more than $4 million of debt
that we have, and they were based on 20-year paydowns. So we are in
about year 4 of 20 years.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: What is our bond rating?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: AA- and Aa3 for the revenue bonds. We are a
little bit higher as an institution. So revenue bonds are typically
a little bit lower rated than the institution as a whole, which is,
by the way, a very healthy rating.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So I have a question about, jumping on to
what Board Member Garcia asked about the administrators. I don't
ever remember hearing managers when I was an employee 2019 and prior.
I was wondering if there was any way -- partly so we know who our
people are, too.
Is there any way we can get a list -- I have tried to get it on
our directory, but one at a time takes a long time. And I'm sure you
all have it in a database, you can just do an SQL thing and get it
for us, just so we know names, positions, and where they mainly work,
just so we know if we run into them?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: You want all positions, all people? Remember,
this is over a thousand folks. Just to say -- I'm just trying to
narrow it down. If you want something less than that, if you want
people above a certain band level.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Like administrators and managers, just so
we know --
>> DR. DAVID BEA: The category I referred to, the management
category?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Yeah. That would be great.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Sure. Absolutely.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Another thing I should know, because I was
faculty for ever, but 50 FTSE to 1 faculty member, it seems -- I
would like you to explain it, because I'm sure if I'm having a hard
time understanding it, people who weren't faculty might not
understand exactly -- I mean, what does that equate to? How many
classes, how many students in a class? I know that -- thank you.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: A little bit apples and oranges. It is a
ratio that itself doesn't mean much other than the number of regular
faculty you have that is connected 50 to 1. It's actually a lot
lower than that, because we are not even near the target number.
We're quite a bit lower than that.
It means the number of regular faculty you have in proportion to
the full-time equivalent students you have. It means that.
It does not mean how many students are in each class. That is
much closer -- we have two other metrics for that that we use in our
funding model for classroom -- it's called a classroom funding model.
For in-person classes we target an average of 20 to 1 in terms of
the budget target. For online we target 25 to 1.
It varies, when I say it averages 20 to 1 in in-person, it does
factor in if a person is called a very high, I can't remember what
the phrase is, it's very high something. Nursing, for example.
On-site has a ratio that like they can't go over 10 to 1, it's
something, I think it's 10 to 1 according to accreditation standards.
When I say it averages 20 to 1, that factors in that nursing is
at 10 to 1, and nursing is funded up to have the appropriate level of
classes for their faculty to student ratio.
So there is sort of -- they are analogous, and mathematically
they would be connected to each other, because like I said, if you
have the ratio full-time students and full-time faculty, I said that
also then controls the number of adjunct faculty you have, and we
have a funding model to make sure that we have appropriate numbers in
terms of the total numbers of students to faculty in a classroom.
That was a lot say, and we'd probably have to get into some real
weeds to get any more than that. They are all interconnected and are
all pretty good ratios in terms of measuring versus our peer
institutions, are appropriate measures to make sure you have solid
education in a community college model.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I think I will need some more, because that
doesn't really answer for me.
Just one question, we don't need to talk about this now, but
maybe if you could help me understand this at a later point, I know
when I taught and I know most of the full-time faculty I know teach
overloads. So instead of just teaching five classes, we were
teaching -- I usually taught eight or nine. Whatever the max was I
taught most of the time.
So how, if we are under that benchmark, whatever you want to call
it, but so many full-time faculty are teaching so many overloads, it
seems like there is something weird going on with the mathematics,
and I just want to get my head wrapped around that.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I will find a way to try and map that out.
It's complicated, because there is a lot, as you can tell, there is a
lot of different pieces to that.
Just off the top of my head, how you just described that, what
that means is while I said that the 50 to 1 number, again, if we
actually were hitting that target and we're heavy, so I think it's
like 43 to 1 or something like that, if we were hitting that 50 to 1,
it would also then mean that I think the percentage of adjunct and
full-time classes that are taught is roughly 50/50. I'd have to go
back. It's roughly that.
Now, in the way that you were saying it, if you have full-time
faculty teaching a bunch of overloads, to me, those overloads get
loaded as an adjunct faculty cost. So to me, not to other people, to
me those look like they are taught by adjuncts. What that would mean
is instead if it was 50/50, if 50% are being taught by full-time
faculty and 50% are being taught by adjunct faculty, it would mean
actually that maybe 51 or 52% were being taught by full-time faculty
and 48 were being taught by adjunct faculty, which would be a
healthier ratio in terms of full-time faculty, right. You want your
full-time faculty teaching classes.
If that's the case, I know there are examples of it, I definitely
know that, what it would mean is it's probably a little bit heavier
than I would even say in terms of what the ratio of adjuncts to
full-time is. We will figure out some ways to show you guys that.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I don't know if there is a question in here,
so forgive me if this is a little stream of consciousness here. I
want to lay my cards out on the table for you as I'm looking at this
and taking away whatever it is. I will start by saying I'm not
opposed to tax increases or tuition increases.
I'm very mindful of the fact that we are in a community now where
affordable housing is becoming increasingly an issue. Again, I'm not
opposed to increasing the property taxes, but my first-blush reaction
is hesitancy to do that. Not only for the cost of property owners
but also for the cost of rent and everything else that rolls down
makes things less and less affordable, unless we have a really good
reason to do that, and there may very well be.
By the same token, the students that we serve and the students we
want to create opportunities for are not generally of means. My
first-blush reaction again to increasing tuition, I'm not opposed to
it, but just to be very hesitant of that.
Coming from that framework, if we get up here and we honestly say
we are not running terribly efficiently, but we should increase all
these things, that strikes me as really problematic.
So what I'm hopeful we can get to is something that potentially
combines needed increases to keep up with some costs, make sure we
are meeting our obligations to faculty and staff, with some strategic
decisions around right-sizing the organization so we are dealing with
both the revenue and expense side simultaneously.
As I said, there is not really a question in there, there is not,
other than to say when I'm talking about these models, I'd love to
see a comprehensive model at some point that can deal with both of
those simultaneously to figure out if we are going to need to raise
taxes or raise tuition, how do we do that in a way that is reasonable
given the environment we are in where the college is also saying,
okay, we are also making strides, maybe even aggressive strides, to
right-size the organization so that we are efficiently using tuition
dollars and taxpayer dollars.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: I will answer the two questions I clearly
heard you say (smiling). The first one is I want to put a little bit
of context around the tax increase.
When I say a 2% increase, the average taxpayer in Pima County,
the average house, so not commercial, so the average residential, the
average bill to Pima Community College would be around $200, give or
take. I'm being really round, but it's about that.
So a 2% increase to that tax bill year over year means they are
paying $4 a year more. When we increase, because we have such a
large tax base, we don't have to increase very much that impacts
individuals, but the cumulative effect for the college is
significant. That's really a luxury. I'm not saying I take tax
increases lightly by any stretch. But I want to make it clear when
we say 2%, we are not jacking tuition rates up that are going to
really hit people hard. The impact for most people is almost not
noticeable, particularly in their tax bill, with other taxes going up
significantly more than ours would be, we would be the nonnoticeable
one.
We typically don't get many comments when we do increase taxes.
Average would be one a year, one comment a year when we increase,
that's when we increase taxes. So I think people recognize the value
that Pima College provides.
Now, to get to the second answer to the question you clearly
asked, the same pressures that our taxpayers are experiencing, our
people are experiencing, there were a number of years, because of
expenditure limitation and because of budget cuts, there is a reason
why our salaries needed to be recalibrated with this class comp
study, and our employees took that a little bit themselves because
the college didn't have resources to give increases.
So the answer I think to the question of like how could you
justify a moderate type of an increase, whether it's on tuition or on
the property tax side, would be it's helping to support our employees
at the college. There were a number of years where they didn't get
significant increases.
We are in a position where we can, I think, do a moderate job.
But they are also experiencing the effects of inflation, so...
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Thank you. I appreciate that. The thought
that pops into my head in that is I don't know whether those two
things are mutually exclusive. Like we can support the needed growth
in salaries to help all of our employees and to make up their costs,
but also make sure if we are heavy in staff we don't really need to
fulfill the mission of the college -- it's not a choice between those
two? That you do both?
>> DR. DAVID BEA: If we have a minute, and I know we have run
over, but this has been a great conversation. Lee, it's up to you.
I have the model that I can show that actually gets at what you are
talking about, which is looking at the revenue increase, what does
that kind of revenue increase, and then potentially offsetting some
of that with reductions over time.
Then we can build in some expectations, particularly as we talk
in the future about a three-year plan. Again, we don't have to solve
all the world's problems in fiscal year '24, but we can set the plan
in place for a three-year plan where, okay, let's try to reduce
through attrition over time a million dollars a year.
So this little guy here can actually show you that. So this
right now, so this one matches the one you had in your packet with a
2% increase and a $3 increase, and it shows that 2% increase for the
pool.
Then down here I can put in a line where we reduce, so we say,
okay, let's target a reduction. So going forward in time, say, for
example, you wanted to say, well, let's do the salary wage pool
increase, give us a little bit more ability to handle employee
priorities, get a little bit further along with the new class comp
structure, give minimum increases, do increase to adjunct wage, let's
make that 3%. And say we do a 3% tax levy increase. We go halfway.
That keeps us about where I was at, and let's just, for the point
of trying to make a balanced budget here -- sorry, I didn't quite get
there. Now we have a slightly more than balanced budget, give or
take. This is a 3% tax levy increase, tuition increase of $5, gives
us enough salary pool ability to do a 3%.
Now let's go into '25 and say, okay, I don't know about that,
going all the way to the max. Let's not kind of commit to that.
Let's see if we can do a really small tuition increase, but we still
want to keep making progress with our employees. Sorry, I just hit
the wrong one.
So now you're looking at next year, the projection. This is a
projection, right, we are guessing at some increases that are going
to happen in the next year, but now we are looking at the balance is
out of whack, right? Then it would be like, okay, let's look to
reduce positions to make up that difference.
Find through attrition let's come up with a plan for making some
reductions. That's where you could then put in -- and I did a lot.
There we go. I do not think we can reduce by $20 million. But $2
million, and let's come up with a plan, what does a plan look like
that would balance this through some reduction, combination of
increase in revenues but also reducing expenses, that's how it would
look.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I appreciate that. Again, just for your
information, for either of you, I'm not saying like we should make
cuts, not necessarily. What I'm trying to say is if you're looking
for, at least for me, I can't speak for all of us, at least for me
the backing to say, okay, we need to make strategic choices for the
college about what we want to invest in and what we don't, including
personnel, I'm okay with that. Like I will back you in that as long
as there is some strategy behind it and it's about furthering the
mission.
Because just continuing to support this infrastructure, if you
don't really need it for the future of the college -- I don't know
what that means, you'll have to tell me that, but like I'm interested
in hearing what you think about that.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: So to that point, there is a lot of moving
pieces to what you're saying. So I will just touch on just a few of
them.
So, for example, what we know today is less of our students are
actually going to an Associate's degree and then transferring. More
of our students are either exiting at the AGEC level or more of our
students are certificate students.
So we are not designated as a degree-granting institution by the
Department of Ed based on what I'm sharing with you.
So if you take it that way, one might argue if you have to reduce
the budget, you don't need to offer as many degrees, because most
students aren't going and seeking a degree.
So I will just use for a round number, let's say we have 10
degree pathways. Maybe you only need two. That would be the
strategic choice. Do we go from 10 to 2 and then reallocate some of
the research to the front end to drive more enrollment to what is
what we can offer.
Let me go to the enrollment side. What we do know is projected
15 to 17% decline in the high school age population over the next 10
years in Pima County. We know that.
So we are not going to grow enrollment from the K12 population
side. The only way we have an opportunity to grow enrollment is on
the working learner side. They're not seeking that degree piece. We
are hearing this all the time. That's not what they are interested
in. They are interested more in this micropathways, more on the
online pieces, but a shorter term.
So if we can reallocate to that piece focused on the adult
learner, do more work-base learning, then that's where we are going
to be more competitive. But it means backing away from what Pima was
historically, a transfer institution. We are not that anymore.
It's like I need the board to support that in order for us to do
that, and then we get to these cuts. Otherwise we are either going
to have to increase revenue just to maintain what we have when you
know that that's not sustainable. We either skate to where that puck
is going now, or it's just going to happen to us. Then it's going to
be harder to maintain what we have.
I'd rather do it with intentionality, be very strategic about it.
It will be painful. It will hurt. But it's also facing the reality
that's unfolding.
So then let me go to the issue of adjunct faculty. If we keep
reducing and we want to maintain full timelines, the full-time have
to do adjunct teaching. So that's one facet.
Let's say that we don't want the full-timers to teach that much
overload. Then we're going to have to make a commitment to adjunct
faculty and give them priority, the nonfull-time faculty priority for
those courses.
If we don't do that, we're going to lose more adjunct faculty
because they will realize I can't get work at Pima Community College
any longer. So I have to go somewhere else to seek that work.
We are in competition for adjunct faculty. Not just with the
University of Arizona. They have options to teach online from
anywhere in the world. I think we are seeing some of that. That's
why the pressure you're starting to see around needing to go
out-of-state to attract adjunct faculty especially for PimaOnline. I
think those pressures aren't going to subside. They are going to get
more exacerbated as we go over time.
Those are just some examples of where I think things are
unfolding.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I appreciate that. I guess from my
perspective then, I mean, that impacts the budget, right? I'd love
to understand better what that vision and strategy is. If you came
back to me and said that means we need more staff and we -- then
fine. It doesn't have to be fewer.
I want to make sure when we are making decisions about what we do
for the budget that the budget is driving the college's strategy or
that the strategy is driving the budget and not the budget is driving
the strategy.
That's the part I guess I'm wanting more of.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: And you're going to see us become even more
intentional about that strategy. Then we step back and say, okay,
based on the strategy, what goals do we set. Based on the strategy,
what resources do we need in order to fulfill that direction that we
are moving in. That will drive all of what you're seeing up here.
So the three-year scenario that Dave is talking about is the
board telling us we want you to look at resetting, say, by $5
million. That will tell me how much of the strategy I can actually
deploy.
Now, if you're willing to be more open-ended than that, we will
come back to you and say we think this is the winning strategy. That
may mean reducing by 20 million, or it could mean we need to invest
more. We don't know which one that is yet.
But if you're open to a more open approach to that, that's what
we would do. Or if you want to have a more managed approach by
saying, like we did prior, where we came up with three scenarios,
they were at different cut levels, the board chose, I think it was a
$15 million reduction level, and we reduced to that number. We can
do that too.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I guess for my purposes, I would rather have
that strategy discussion and then figure out how the budget aligns to
the strategy than trying to align your strategy to the budget. I
think when you go through these scenarios, which are useful, I think
the temptation is always like pick the one in the middle.
It's like the easiest one, you feel like you're compromising, but
it doesn't mean that's the best one or what's going to drive what you
need. I'm looking for that larger strategic picture and then figure
out how the budget fits underneath rather than picking among whatever
these options are.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: I think this is a perfect retreat discussion
for May, that we come to you with this strategy and show you why this
is the approach that we need to go in. Here's the data supports
that, as well as -- remember, data only allows you to answer what is.
It doesn't allow you to answer what could be.
So I think sometimes we get lost in the data trying to project
the future. The data is not going to help you project the future.
It's just going to help tell you what you're working with right now.
We can do some of that too. Some of this is an art, not just a
science.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: So related to the upcoming decision related to
tuition, what we have done, we have done it a few different ways, we
have put forward a recommendation for a singular number. We have
also put in what, you know, okay, we recommend a $3 increase to do X,
and then show also what a $1, what a $5, whatever, much like what we
did here, asking for some feedback from the board on what the board
would like to see come March in terms of that.
Because unfortunately the timing isn't ideal with super strategy.
Happy to do that. I think that's going to be a great set of
conversations, but we do have this decision related to tuition coming
up. It probably is a good time -- well, I would appreciate any
feedback the board might have for that.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Like we discussed the other day for me, it's
difficult for me to have a tuition conversation without a tax
conversation. So when I vote to make a decision on tuition, I also
already got in my mind what I want to vote on as far as the tax
situation is.
Maybe in the future it would be helpful if we can make those
decisions closer together. You know, I don't know what that does to
the timeline, but I don't suspect with having -- it wouldn't be
detrimental to make the tax decision quicker.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: No. It actually would clarify things.
February is when we get the tax assessment information so we know
what the growth is at that point. That gives you a really good idea.
So any time after that is -- any time after that to March. See,
that's the problem is it starts, one thing, things have different
timelines associated with them.
But that's essentially once we get that February information, and
we can usually estimate it pretty decently, we could have that
conversation kind of like what we are having now only more formally,
right?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Thank you.
>> DR. DAVID BEA: Again, if we build the three-year plan, then
there will be a foundation from which we are actually building it
from. It's sort of starting anew a little bit right now with the
conversation.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Madam Chair, I don't think we have time to
do all of the next set of presentations, so I'd like to know what
your desire is.
Do we do the four-year one or do we do the board priorities one?
Then we have to do your assessment.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I think we should do the four-year
baccalaureate, and maybe if we can go a little quicker through the
slides, if that's a possibility?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: He'll try. Come on up, Ian.
Thanks, Dave.
>> DR. IAN ROARK: All right. Board Chair, members of the board,
Chancellor, colleagues and guests. Very excited, and thank you for
keeping it on the agenda, to talk about our exploration of possible
implementation of baccalaureate degrees at Pima Community College.
Part of my raspy voice, I have also been suffering from allergies
with all the wind and weather changes.
Again, right now, because ultimately with all new programs, the
final decision for what we could offer with respect to baccalaureate
degree regimen at Pima rests with the board, as further stated in
Senate Bill 1453, which we will go over in a little bit of detail as
a part of this presentation.
We don't want to have any foregone conclusions as to what our
baccalaureate degree regimen is or that we will in fact move forward,
although many individuals are hopeful that we will, including a group
of students we met with, the Student Senate, just recently.
So we have formed what is called the baccalaureate degree
exploratory committee, or baccalaureate degree committee for short.
This is just the initial committee for this phase. There are other
people who will be added in other subgroups that will come out of
this initial work.
You will see that it is predominantly composed of deans and also
faculty, and we have members of the committee here, and because they
have taken time from their day I'd just like to recognize those that
are in the room.
We have in the back, Wendy Weeks, AVC CQI. Wendy's role on the
committee is extraordinarily important because she is our go-to for
the accreditation pieces related to this new sort of offering, as
well as our curriculum and new program timelines.
We have Amanda Abens, dean of workforce development, lifelong
learning. We have Faculty Senate President, Rita Lennon, one of our
lead faculty members.
Is there anybody else?
No. Oh, Vanessa. Dr. Vanessa Arellano, who is also serving in a
project management capacity. She is on acting assignment in the
provost's office currently as director of provosts initiatives.
We have Cecily Westfall representing finance for a reason I will
talk about in this presentation. We felt finance needed to be in the
room from the onset. There are limiting factors in the legislation
with respect to how much we can charge for these programs.
So briefly we will talk about the context, what we are calling
the application and the rubric, that was sent to you ahead of this
meeting, as well as the timeline as it stands.
What's really interesting about Senate Bill 1453 is the way it
really aligns to the vision and the direction that we are currently
headed with respect to centers of excellence at the institution and
really framing our exploration and possible implementation of
baccalaureate degrees in a workforce development context and in an
equity context. The equity context is pretty clear that we have the
ability to offer the same level of award as universities at a much
lower cost for the community that we serve, while at the same time
ensuring that we are not sacrificing quality or the workforce
outcomes that are specified and that are aligned to our mission and
value proposition.
So it really is about meeting the needs of these new majority
learners. While we will continue to serve more and more working
adults through micropathways, through work-based learning, there are
components of that work that can actually be integrated into
baccalaureate degree offerings so that we have a clear value
proposition and a mark of differentiation from our university
partners. So in essence, we are not competing. We have something
different to offer.
So the presentation is hyper-linked and highly recommend just
going to those whenever you have the ability, and recommend to all of
my colleagues and friends to really read the Arizona Senate Bill
1453. I have only captured three primary bullet points there. But
really specifies and puts the guardrails on all 10 community college
districts in Arizona with respect to what can we do? What can we
offer, and how many can we offer from that context?
Really clearly outlines this has to meet a workforce development
need in the community that is otherwise not being met. It really
puts a lot of guardrails on ensuring there is not unnecessary
duplication, and that's a quote from the legislation with our partner
universities in the region.
It did not specify Pima County and Maricopa County by name, but
they did a typical any county with a population of over 750,000
people in it, here are your additional requirements.
So we have those additional requirements. Equally Coconino
College, Maricopa, and Pima Community College have another facet
which is we have to keep our university partners informed.
Interestingly in the legislation, one particular piece of detail is
60 days before we bring to you, our elected board, very specific
pieces related to baccalaureate degree regimen for your approval, we
have to send that same information to the University of Arizona.
The University of Arizona does not have a veto over what we
offer, but the University of Arizona can directly protest in a letter
to the board if they are not satisfied with the direction that we are
going. That's very specifically written into the legislation.
That's why ensuring there is no unnecessary duplication is
crucial. Yes, sir?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Can you give us further clarification what
you think that third bullet means.
>> DR. IAN ROARK: Unnecessary -- ensure that there is not
unnecessary duplication.
So in other words, if I mention a program, it doesn't mean this
is like in the balance right now, but common considerations come up
such as we have a nursing shortage in our community. We offer LPNs,
licensed professional nurse, we offer associate degree nursing, so we
should just automatically offer bachelor's degree in nursing as well
because we will help solve that workforce problem.
There are other components into that that the University of
Arizona may look at that and say that's unnecessarily duplicating our
nursing program because you can't find the clinical spots now for the
nursing program that you have.
So it is not specified in the law what unnecessary duplication
is, but if right now we proposed to offer a bachelor's degree for
which there is no labor market data to support it and that bachelor's
degree is offered by the University of Arizona already, that would be
considered unnecessary duplication.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Thank you.
>> DR. IAN ROARK: Yes, sir.
One more thing about the guardrails, I forgot to mention, it's
not on the bullet point. How do I go back on that.
Is the number of programs that we are allowed to offer as a
college district is also specified and limited within Arizona Senate
Bill 1453. After we launch our first proposed baccalaureate degrees,
of which will be two, we will get to the reason why there, we are
allowed only for four years afterwards to offer 5% of our total
offerings at that level. And then after that we are capped at 10% of
our total offerings at the baccalaureate degree level in perpetuity
or unless the law changes, so there is a limit on that. Equally the
upper-division courses, junior and senior-year courses, can only be
offered at 150% of current tuition and fees at the institution.
The other guardrail that is imposed of course is through our
accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission. There is a lot of text
on this slide. But like any new program, Higher Learning Commission
approval is required prior to launching the baccalaureate degree as a
new program.
The second and third bullet point are really crucial, because we
get asked a lot, Maricopa is making announcements about offering
seven, maybe eight baccalaureate degrees coming this fall, and we are
one year behind on that timeline from where they are, how come we
can't offer just as many as they can.
The reason is in the structural difference between the colleges
and the district in Maricopa as compared to Pima Community College.
So as you can see on the slide, Higher Learning Commission rules,
we can only offer two baccalaureate degrees initially, and the exact
quote on why is on the slide. Don't do that often, but I wanted to
read that for everybody's edification.
If an institution plans to request approval for a third program
at a new degree or credential level, it must also submit a request to
change its mission and student body. The institution may submit this
request before or in conjunction with its request to offer or to add
a third program.
So per the Higher Learning Commission, we are an associate-degree
granting institution. We can punch above our weight two times, two
baccalaureate degrees, before we have to go through a significant
process through CQI that would involve lots of individuals at the
college. It's not like full accreditation, but just a couple clicks
below that. Once receiving that approval, then we can continue to
add to the regimen. So there's a limiting factor on the initial
number from our accreditor.
So the committee was formed in late spring, really started the
work over the summer of '22. Did a lot of homework and a lot of
reading. There's a lot of research and publications. About half of
the states in the union have now authorized community colleges to
offer baccalaureate degrees, some as long ago as 20 years ago. So
it's great to see Arizona has moved in and joined our peer states in
that respect.
There has also been a lot of interest from faculty, from deans,
from community members in terms of what they want to offer, what they
believe we should be offering.
So we really wanted to take a meticulous and phased approach to
considering how are we going to bring that recommendation to the
Executive Leadership Team, the provost, the chancellor, like we do
all other new programs and to the board to ensure that we have done
our due diligence to meet all of the guardrails and all of the
parameters that I've spoken of and more that haven't been able to
address today.
So we also have received a lot of guidance on the timeline with
respect to HLC, and that not only includes HLC, but just like every
other new program award, this has to be submitted to the Department
of Ed, Veterans Affairs, so on and so forth. There is a lot of
distinct, mini timelines within the macro timeline that have to be
met.
Right now deans and faculty are currently working on phase I of
the application. We wanted to do this in two phases, because there
are a lot of considerations that have to be made before we make a
final decision.
And so we didn't want individuals to have to do too much work if
their candidate wasn't really following within the guidelines or
parameters or if it wasn't aligned to the strategic direction of the
institution from the onset.
The first phase is due on March 1st. I have been notified of
four different divisions, and maybe as many as 10 different ideas so
far coming forward through this process.
The first phase will be a description of the program overall,
labor market analysis in conjunction with STAR here at Pima and
workforce development.
A competitor and collaborator analysis, and that's really, Board
Member McLean, I meant to address that, are we unnecessarily
duplicating intentionally or unintentionally with our idea.
And then an initial focus on closing barriers to learner success
and advancing equity. Is there real upward mobility, if I earn this
bachelor's degree, is there real upward mobility in our community
with that credential.
Second phase, same process but many, many more data points. I
will spare the time on reading all of them, but really looking at is
this something we can build upon with relatively low cost and high
return on investment in the end, or is this something that's going to
require new labs that we don't have?
There are certain areas where even though it may, per the Higher
Learning Commission, require a master's degree faculty, for example,
many health professions, their external creditor or agency may
require Ph.D. faculty. So there is an element of cost that comes in
with respect to those, or it's a small faculty pool and it's really
hard to recruit faculty, particularly at Ph.D. level, including
especially in technical areas as they oftentimes may be more rare.
Then also what are the work-based learning opportunities that we
could incorporate into our baccalaureate degree regimen. What are
the distinctive features that we could add into our program overall.
One of the challenges that the chancellor brought to the group was
that whatever the program area is, whatever it is, we need to work in
our climate action and sustainability plan as well as Diversity,
Equity, and Inclusion Plan. Not necessarily as discrete courses or
distinct courses, but somehow thematically competency in those
domains needs to be addressed in our awards.
There is a lot of flags on this timeline. And so I highly
recommend looking at, in your slide deck and the text is really small
even on that screen there. So we are in the January/February
timeline there.
The phase II application will be begin in March, and so then we
propose that by October of '23 we will be submitting, if the board so
decides, we will be submitting our first one or two to the Higher
Learning Commission in October of '23.
So a lot of compressed activity right now. Then not a lot of
compressed activity, because the wait time at Higher Learning
Commission and other entities is sometimes lengthy.
Then finally, we would be putting it in the catalog, in the
'25/'26 catalog, April of '25 marketing campaign, and then August of
'25 would be the potential launch of our first two baccalaureate
degrees at Pima Community College.
Currently we are communicating with lots of groups. Favorite one
so far other than you has been our Student Senate. They really were
excited about this opportunity coming to the institution. That
really kind of charged up the group even more about the work that's
currently underway.
We will be working with Provost Dolores Duran-Cerda on our
university partner forums to ensure we are not getting too far ahead
or out of scope in any way that would damage our relationship with
our university partners.
Community forum, we are going to have, it's going to be a part of
futures coming up that Dr. Nic Richmond leads, but we will also be
engaging the business community directly through the chambers of
commerce and a survey on what are some of the pain points with
respect on the ground that they are not able to fill at the
baccalaureate degree regimen.
And then our final selection is proposed to be in April, although
we have given ourselves a little bit of a cushion on that. Then from
there, of course there will be the necessary subgroups involving
these areas and potentially more as we develop and implement these
potential new offerings. Academic affairs, financial aid, registrar,
finance, so on and so forth.
I tried to go as quick as I could, Chair Riel. I hope that was
helpful. Are there any questions or thoughts?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Go back to the duplication of services. I'm
thinking more in terms of competition. I'm assuming that the
University of Arizona connection is going to be a strong relationship
that we have to nurture, but what about the other groups like
University of Phoenix, Chapman College, those kinds of colleges that
are here offering baccalaureate degrees that sometimes fly underneath
the radar.
>> DR. IAN ROARK: So the law, specifically Senate Bill 1453,
only pertains to the state universities. But the market analysis
that we are asking programs to go through needs to include all of
those facets of competition within the community, because it would be
a great expense for us to develop a baccalaureate degree only to be
undercut by a competitor that's already offering the same thing and
we didn't take that into consideration. We only focused on the
University of Arizona.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I'm just assuming we can beat them.
>> DR. IAN ROARK: There are a lot of good ideas, and again, I
think it's going to be a matter of the labor market proposition, you
know, the unique and distinct experience that learners in our
community are going to have at Pima, and then also some of the new
facets we'd like to introduce into the baccalaureate degrees.
So, for example, just a couple of, no fingers on scales, but
there is no other entity that we know of in the community that's
offering BAAS degree or a bachelor of industrial technology. There
are other offerings at those levels that are not BA or bachelor of
science, for example.
That's what you see in many of the other states that are offering
these, it's a distinct credential that's not unique but mostly
concentrated within the community college space.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Isn't NAU offering some of those?
>> DR. IAN ROARK: I'm not familiar with NAU offering associate
or BAAS. We'll circle back to you on that, sir.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: When we met Angelo in Washington, D.C., he
was getting ready to transfer to a baccalaureate degree --
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: At NAU. So we have partnered with NAU,
especially in the automated industrial technology area where they are
offering that upper division that allows the students to get a
bachelor's degree.
So I think that's probably the area -- it's more generic than to
AIT specifically. I think that's what he was referring to.
But what this is raising, if you put aside for a moment what ASU
is doing around their polytechnic campus, that's where the real void
is in the state. There is not a polytechnic university like you see
in the California system with the Cal Polys, right? I think that's a
great opportunity for a place like Pima to go into that void that
does not exist and then claim and own that space.
Because no one is really thinking about that other than ASU as
far as I know. So I think that's the unique value proposition that
we have. If we go into other areas that others are going, even
though they are in different parts of the state, then all of a sudden
you're inviting a lot more competitors in terms of the market.
So being sensitive to the competition is you're spot on, but I
don't think anyone can compete with us on price. But the question
is, going back to the earlier conversation, will we have the
resources to sustain that investment, because it will cost us more to
run these programs, especially when we can only go 150% of our
tuition level.
Some of these programs may cost more because of the faculty cost,
other library investments, whatever it might be. So we have to be
sensitive to that reality.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So do we have to go to HLC when we change
our name from what it is now to Pima Community and Polytechnic
College? (Laughter.)
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: But I think to that point, if you think we
need to have more community conversations, we will do that, because I
know when I was first hired here, this was a sore subject for a
segment of the community about Pima becoming a four-year institution.
Effectively what this does is turns us into a four-year institution.
The times are different now, and the focus is a lot different
than what I think was conceived of back then. So we will be glad to
have more, allow more dialogue in, and maybe one of those community
things with all those university partners, bring them in. I will
tell you this: They are not asking us to start certain programs.
They just go and do it. Just keep that in mind as well.
>> DR. IAN ROARK: There is one point that I failed to make in
the presentation on the HLC slide, and that is why is Maricopa able
to offer seven and potentially more, and that is because every single
one of their colleges is individually accredited, not through the
district. They essentially have 20 opportunities before they have to
go through that reaffirmation process with the HLC, whereas we only
have one college.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: When I was thinking about this, we have a
huge teacher shortage in Arizona, so I was thinking, how is the
University of Arizona going to be okay with us teaching teachers?
But what a great competition model between the University and the
college, and there may be a lot people that would like to be a
teacher but they can't afford going to the University of Arizona.
So I'm just wondering how all that is going to play out when, you
know, you guys start negotiating with the universities. I'm really
interested in hearing what's going to happen.
Anyway, thanks. It was a great presentation. I think that the
board, we have heard some of this before and it is really exciting
and for our students especially. Thank you.
>> DR. IAN ROARK: Absolutely. Thank you.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I know this is something Maria has
mentioned. I don't know if she's still on or has any other
questions. She brought it up in one of the board meetings and I feel
it was something that was important to her.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Maria, are you still here?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I'm here. Hi. I'm still here. I'm
listening. I have been going in and out because I keep coughing so
much. Can you hear me?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Yes, we can, Maria. Greg Taylor was saying
that you had a question, one of the prior meetings when we had been
talking about this, and we were just wondering if you had any
questions.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I just didn't want us to forget about you,
Maria.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: I have not a question but a comment, and I
do agree it was a great presentation. One of the things that I see
in reference to as a comment is that we should not lose sight in
reference to the space capacity in reference to, comparison of the
student ratio as well, too. We do have what, what is it, six
campuses now?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Five.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Yeah, we need to look at that with the
little campus on 22ND street.
I feel that the board really need to look at all angles, what I'm
trying to say. One of the things that was mentioned earlier in
reference to cost-effective/cost efficient, I think the board really
needs to really look at the true and the real picture of what we
have, and I think it's up to us to come up and generate those
questions to yourself but also to chancellor to really have a full,
complete picture of what we are going to be doing in reference to the
budget that's upcoming very quick, as well, too.
But that was a comment in reference to space capacity.
Maintenance and operation for all, for the five campuses, it's not
cheap, as well, especially when we don't have the students. But we
need to relook and revisit and come up with a solution for that, as
well, too.
Thank you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Thank you, Ian.
Let me just make one piece going back to the budget component,
and then we are just really down to your last almost 10 minutes.
So just going back on the budget piece for a moment, keep in mind
that the students are scheduled to get an increase in their Pell.
Even if we increase the tuition by a few dollars a credit, the Pell
that they will receive would be more than enough to cover that
increase and still leave some additional dollars for them.
So just keep that in mind. We will be glad to bring that part
into the discussion so you know exactly what that looks like.
So we are down to less than 15 minutes. I think we have time to
do the item No. 3. We just want to get a sense from you on this
instrument that's in here. I know, Board Chair, you have suggested
that other form.
So I'm wondering if we take that form and this form and just look
at where the gaps are and then create the nice little electronic,
fill-it-out online versus having to do it by paper?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So my comments, I don't know if I shared
this with the rest of the board members, but there are quite a few
statements on the self-evaluation that are posed from the negative
point of view, like the board does not talk bad about the college.
I just -- I don't want to be associated with a document like
that. I want to say what we do great and just keep lifting the board
up. So anything that -- this one, does not direct the chancellor.
You know, that was No. 1. I believe the board adopts broad policies
and uses its power to govern effectively, something like that, and
not say the things that we are not supposed to do.
Anyway, so that was my first thought. This one is also from
ACCT. It's shorter, there's 10 options. The other thing I like
about this one is it comments, we are evaluating ourselves
individually and we are also evaluating the board as a unit.
I think that that's good too, because, you know, if board members
think that the board didn't do something but I say, well, I was great
at it, right, then maybe I need to look at those and say, oh, maybe I
need to listen to the recording of the meeting and make sure that,
you know, maybe I thought I was doing a good job and I didn't.
Anyway, I just like how positive all of these statements are. I
went through the 21 on our list. Like this first statement on this
document, the board operates as a unit and honors board decisions.
To me, that met the requirements that we had on the original one of
No. 2, No. 9, and No. 17.
So it ends up -- and there are many like that. It ends up that
No. 6 isn't represented exactly or even. Nos. 4, 5, 6, and I think
those are the only three that aren't represented somehow in this one.
So if there is something that we need to do with 4, 5, or 6, but I
wrote them in positive words instead of in the negative one.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I agree. I like the idea of using the ACCT
version that you had there. For all the reasons you articulated, but
also because presumably other boards are using that or a similar one,
I think it allows us to more easily benchmark us against how are we
doing against some of our peers. Yeah, I like that idea a lot.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I agree with the chair.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Just so you know, Madam Chair, this
instrument here was from one of the documents that you all received
through your board retreat training, so it is also an ACCT document
that we just modified. But we'd be glad to take that, maybe take
where the gaps, as you pointed out, and just reframe them into one
solid document and show, you know, you individually and then board
member -- now, I don't know if we can get benchmarking data from the
other colleges who are using a similar instrument, if they are even
doing that at all.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Then the only one I don't feel comfortable
putting on our document no matter how we word it is the 11th item on
the original. Oh, wait that's not it. Yeah, it sort of is.
I have been grappling with the words on the Arizona Revised
Statute, and I brought it up before, 15-1444. I think it's item No.
4 or 6. It just says the words, I don't know exactly, but it's
something like the board shall visit all our community colleges and,
you know, effectively --
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Hold on. Oh, sorry.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: You say hold on, Madam Chair, when you want
me to hold on. Sorry, I'm just joking.
But I would like to make sure, you know, I would like to, you
know, before we put an item such as that on our thing to make sure it
doesn't go against, you know, legal interpretation of what the state
statute, because, you know, according to the statute, our fiduciary
responsibility is to visit, and it says inspect efficiently the
management, the procedures, and practices, there are three things
that it asked.
If we're not able to go and talk to the people on the campuses
or, you know, watch when they are having their groups and things like
that, I don't see how we can do that.
So before we put something like that on our document, because of
course you all know currently I'm not doing that at all. I have been
talking to -- I attended an AERC meeting that was amazing, and I have
attended a Faculty Senate meeting, too, not to participate but just
to hear what they are talking about, to inspect efficiently or
whatever the words were.
Thanks for that.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I like the 10 items and one page.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Maria and Luis on Zoom call, do you have
any comments?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Well, one of the things I would have liked
to have seen, I agree with you that the shorter version is better.
Yes, it is from ACCT, but then on the other hand, should we have not
met as a committee to discuss this? I guess it is what it is, right,
but I'm still opposed to being given documents that we're supposed to
read instead of being presented and treated like adults to look at an
item and say, okay, group, what do you think of this?
The other thing I'd like to add to this is the fact that I would
also like to see the chancellor's evaluation or self-evaluation
something similar to this.
I'm done. Thank you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Just to respond to that. I agree, Maria,
but I think what we are doing right now, neither of these are
for-sure things. We still get to decide.
The only reason I took the shorter version is because I wanted to
make changes, but then when I read the shorter version, this was also
in our packet from one of our retreats from ACCT. It was a
no-brainer. We could use something that was already written that met
most of our needs, but we can change whatever we don't like in this
one too.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Okay. Thank you.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: I also concur with the last document. But
if we need to do some addendums, I think we should. But I think make
it the best as possible as we can.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Positive.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you. Do we need to -- okay.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: I don't think you need to take -- well, you
can't take an action here, first of all, right?
So, I mean, I think I have enough sense of the direction to go
back and revise the document and then bring it to you for your
approval. So I don't know if we can make that happen by this March
meeting? Yeah. I think we can make it happen by this March meeting.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: And if you have any questions, call the
chair.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Yes (laughter).
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So we will see everybody at our next board
meeting, which I think is in about two weeks. Thank you, Pima
College, for doing all the amazing things you're doing for our
students and our community. We see you working hard every day, and
we are so proud of all that you have done and that you continue to
do. So thank you.
We are going to close the meeting. Adjourned. Thank you.
(Adjournment.)
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