Budget crunching at LCCC

Budget crunching at LCCC

 

The district Board of Trustees for Lake City Community College has approved the college’s 2008-2009 operating budget, after cutting long-time traditions like the school’s athletic programs and student dorms.

"The budget has been a challenge all year." said Dr. Charles Hall, president of the college, "All the situations seemed to reduce everything we wanted to do dollar-wise."

Hall said the disappearing revenue required some hard budget decisions this year so the college could hold back a small reserve in anticipation of more cuts in the next legislative budget session rumored to take place right after the presidential elections in November.

"Employees at the college took no salary increase this year in support of what we are doing, but other than the custodial staff (and the elimination of the athletic program), we haven’t had to reduce staff as such," Hall said. "We had a couple people who left because of the athletic program but there were positions that they could have applied for, but chose not to."

LCCC has now out-sourced their custodial duties. The money saved by eliminating the athletic programs has been used for minority scholarships and the planned expansion and addition of new academic programs.

The college is also increasing tuition by six percent, subject to approval by the Florida Community College System.

"We’re going to have a leaner, tighter budget than we’ve had before; we just need to be really conservative with what we are going to do," Hall said. "The academic program is what we do and service to the community, and so we think we’ve protected those."