Board Report - January, 2006

Report from Lane Community College President Mary Spilde
To the Lane Community College Board of Education
January 18, 2006

Happy New Year!

We will be discussing the budget later this evening, but I will give a brief update now. We are still working on updating the projections and plan to finalize them next week. As I mentioned last month, we are going to have a pretty sizeable deficit. We need to take steps immediately to mitigate that deficit and will have to make decisions this year for the 2006-07 budget. It is likely that the deficit will be in the same order of magnitude as we experienced in 2001-02. We have known this day was coming unless some things went our way, such as enrollment, funding, etc. Unfortunately, things haven't moved fast enough in terms of increases in state funding or enrollment.

I have notified all staff via e-mail, already met with managers, and scheduled two all-staff meetings for next week. Tomorrow, I will propose a new timeline for the budget process to College Council. Even before we began updating the projections, it became clear to me that what we are doing and how we are doing it right now is not sustainable in the long run. We must make some fundamental changes to how we do our work. I am in the process of preparing a short presentation on what I mean by this and will share it at the next available opportunity.

At the December meeting, we updated you on the work with the county on the Gonyea interchange. I am passing out a letter that was sent to the County requesting further action.

Earlier this month, during the state of the city event, I was pleased to receive an award on behalf of the college from Mayor Kitty Piercy for our work on sustainability.

I would like to note that two of our staff received awards at the Martin Luther King celebration on Monday evening. Retired Multicultural Center Director Connie Mesquita received the Human Rights Commission award and Counselor Marva Solomon received the ASLCC award.

I am passing out Whispering Sage , a publication which is the work of the students and staff in the Adult Basic and Secondary Education program. It is an opportunity for students at all skill levels to see their work published. I thought you might enjoy it.

You have received notices from Donna Zmolek regarding the Springfield and Eugene Chamber dinners and the Lane Council of Governments (LCOG) dinner. These are really good opportunities for you to connect with the community. If you are interested and have not responded, please let Donna know.