Administration is recommending an immediate freeze on vacant positions and possibly closing one of the satellite campuses, which will be discussed this afternoon.

The recommendations also include hiring less hourly staff, such as student workers and discontinuing funds for campus construction.

Administrators, faculty and support staff from the College Planning Council will meet to discuss recommendations to deal with the continued decline in enrollment and finances, which don’t show any signs of stopping.

“It is evident that the college is unable to stop the decline in enrollment or the erosion of ending balances,” the report says.

As of now, the council is anticipating the current $2 million revenue loss from the state to jump to $4.7 million during the 2017-18 year, based on declining enrollment alone. The loss in enrollment is caused by combination of issues, such as the state of the economy, UC and Cal State acceptance, and the high cost of housing.

The agenda, which was posted over the weekend, details 12 recommendations from Chief Business Officer Joe Sullivan to decrease expenses and increase revenue.

The eight recommendations to cut expenses are as follow:

• The college should immediately implement a hiring freeze for faculty, staff and administration. The college would not layoff any employees, but would not hire any new ones either.
• The Supplemental Early Retirement Program this semester offered managers, faculty and staff early retirement, and said some of these positions would be replaced. However, not replacing seven classified staff members would save the college an additional $468,000, and not replacing eight faculty members would save an additional $810,000. If the college did not replace those taking an early retirement the college would still need to reduce employees, but would possibly stop the need for layoffs.
• The college should begin the evaluation of facilities to shut down because there will not be enough custodial and maintenance staff to support the Main Campus and both campus centers. City College has two satellite campuses: the Wake Campus and the Schott Campus.
• The college should discontinue funding campus construction and equipment.
• City College should cease automatic replacement of technology equipment. Technology equipment should only be replaced if cost of repair is more than cost of replacement.
• The college should stop postponed maintenance projects, and only complete emergency, health and safety repairs.
• City College should significantly decrease hourly staff, such as student employees.
• The college should reduce all discretionary expenses.

The other four recommendations were on increasing income. The recommendations are as follow:

• The college should improve classroom efficiency.
• The college should change fee-based noncredit courses such as those offered by the Center for Lifelong Learning to free noncredit courses, which will generate money from the state.
• City College should increase marketing to in-state students, which would bring in more non-local students. The college should also increase marketing for the College Promise.
• The college should improve the course offerings for the two summer sessions.

These recommendations are conclusions based on a five-year projection of the college’s expenses and revenue. The assumed effects on enrollment over the next five years were also taken into account.

During the meeting at 3 p.m, the council will also discuss the fate of the dual summer sessions, which overall has been approved, but with conditions.