Trustee Mary Hornbuckle agrees. She thinks that using the reserve funds will likely just temporarily fend off inevitable staffing cuts — 83% of the district’s money is spent on salaries, benefits and other “people costs” — but she believes the reserves will provide a cushion so those changes can be made slowly and will have less of a sudden, shocking effect on students.
“In tough times, this is a pretty non-painful way to come up with additional funds. Most of the cuts we made are one-time monies, but they’re one-time monies available to us, so better to use those than have drastic cuts right now,” Hornbuckle said. “We’re lucky to delay it for a year and perhaps property tax will pick up a little bit, but we’re not holding our breath.”
Of the $10 million that the district is cutting out of its budget, less than half will be passed on to the individual colleges: OCC and Coastline Community College, which have campuses in Costa Mesa, and Golden West College in Huntington Beach.
A steep drop in class offerings like the district underwent in 2002-03 to deal with a budget crisis would be unacceptable this year, Currie said. But the chancellor knows there’s a strong possibility that the district’s funding will be even worse in 2010-11, so she has directed campuses to reduce class offerings slightly in 2009-10 and try to cut down on each class’ operating expenses in preparation.
“I’m asking the campuses to make sure that beyond the cuts that we will be doing, to absolutely save every penny so that we have a larger ending balance in spite of the cuts,” Currie said.
