City College’s Board of Trustees gathered on Thursday, Nov. 14, in which City College Faculty Association President Cornelia Alsheimer-Barthel brought forward problems identified by the Faculty Association (FA) concerning the 2024-25 budget.
Alsheimer-Barthel explained how, in light of the campaign for Measure P, which has officially passed, the FA has been assuring voters about the college’s fiscal responsibility and transparency regarding City College’s budget.
The FA has not received any responses to their budgetary questions and concerns, despite observations being shared with multiple members of the board.
“The FA believes this board has to pull this year’s adopted budget and replace it with one that is complete and correct,” Alsheimer-Barthel said. “The one that you approved on Sept. 12 is neither of these. It is not complete, and it is not correct.”
Four important funds were identified as missing, including campus store funds, parking and transportation funds, the financial aid fund, and the rental of facilities fund, according to Alsheimer-Barthel.
“As part of our commitment to transparency, wouldn’t now be a good time to see those fund pages?” Alsheimer-Barthel said. “And to develop a complete and corrected adopted budget for the current year?”
This call for transparency outlined a deeper issue, addressing the lack of trust and transparency between faculty and administrators on campus.
“We won the bond measure, and that is major,” Alsheimer-Barthel said. “But what we have not won back is the trust and morale of the members of this campus.”
She went on to explain the severity of this budgetary mixup, marking it “the biggest budgetary chaos that this college has ever experienced.”
According to Alsheimer-Barthel, the 2023–24 fiscal year ended with a modest surplus, but the campus was told that they were in a year of fiscal crisis. Over $5 million were homemade, which means that this money was not caused by a state deficit factor.
“Based on this expected huge deficit, we cut classes, turned students away, and even denied small funding requests,” Alsheimer-Barthel said.
Multi-million dollar increases for overspending in faculty instructional salaries were identified by the FA as problematic, and when the FA President tried to share concerns around budgeting errors, their problems were “ignored or dismissed,” according to Alsheimer-Barthel.
She highlighted three areas where the FA believes budgetary chaos derives from, including overload instruction, interest revenue, and nonresident/international tuition. All of these areas shed light on the effect the budget has on faculty, staff, and students.
“We tried to reduce the class schedule in a way that would cause the least harm to students,” Alsheimer-Barthel said. “Faculty lost classes, staff worried about layoffs, faculty were asked to over-enroll, and they did. All of this caused an enormous amount of stress throughout the college.”
The strain placed on faculty and staff, paired with the pressures of mitigating course over-enrollment, emphasized the prevalent issue of distrust within City College.
“There’s a lot of mistrust in the community and mistrust in the college,” Trustee Veronica Gallardo said in response to the presentation. “You can’t rely on presidents because they come and they go.”
In addition to the FA report, board members shared their thoughts on long-term budget sustainability.
“Some classes may need to be removed if they are not maintaining an ideal number of students,” Trustee Charlotte Gullap-Moore said.
Gallup-Moore offered insight into a potential three-five-year plan with the goal of no longer working off a budget deficit and instead finding new ways to improve the current budgetary state. This included potential faculty cuts and closely monitoring enrollment levels in different classes and overall programs within City College.
“I am talking about faculty positions,” Gallup-Moore said. “That we need to cut.”
Trustee Ellen Stoddard elaborated, “We may not need to fire people, but we can just not rehire people.”
Trustee Marsha Croninger offered further insight into this discussion, explaining that attention should also be diverted to facilities and how they impact spending. Croninger drew attention to cutting down the number of large buildings on campus and looking at the amount of resources not being utilized in classrooms and labs.
The Board of Trustees will reconvene on Dec. 19.
