LCC board delays vote on three-year plan to cut spending

Saying it needed more time to analyze a plan to trim spending at Lane Community College, the Board of Education voted Wednesday, Dec. 3, to delay approval of the proposal — but gave administrators the green light to keep working on its details.

The college is looking to cut $8 million over the next three school years.

“I think this is a really, really important document,” said board member Zachary Mulholland, but noted that board members had only two days to review it before Wednesday’s meeting and that the plan did not list specific areas that could be cut. “I still have questions to truly feel 100% comfortable with it. I don’t think the public has had time to process it at all, and I think that it makes sense for us to take a little bit more time.”

Mulholland proposed the board take up the plan for approval at its January meeting. His motion passed on a 5-2 vote, but only after an amendment made it clear that administrators could continue to develop the plan. 

That assurance is critical to administrators, board member Steve Mital said.

“They’re not asking for a budget,” Mital said, adding that college officials were “asking for us to support, really, the direction that they, in their expertise, believe we need to go, and they have given us a convincing argument. The strongest signal we can send right now is to support the direction that they’re asking us to allow them to go.”

Wednesday’s meeting also included two hours of public comment and a first look at the results of a board self-assessment, among other items. About 50 people packed into LCC’s boardroom, with another 30 or so in an overflow room in a nearby building. Some of them even stuck it out to the end of the meeting, which lasted 5 hours, 27 minutes, including a pair of breaks.

Three-year plan

The three-year plan, presented by Kara Flath, LCC’s vice president of finance and operations, and Jonathon Campbell, its director of budget and resource planning, stems from a board policy calling for the college to maintain an ending fund balance (essentially, its reserves) amounting to 10% of its general fund. The budgeted general fund for the current school year is about $108.1 million, and the projected end balance is 7.45% of that.

Without making adjustments, Flath and Campbell said, the percentage would drop to 5.03% by the end of fiscal year 2029.

The plan, as presented to the board, says that a 10% ending fund balance is considered “the minimum safe reserve level for community colleges because it protects the institution from financial instability and unexpected events,” among other reasons. 

The plan would include cuts of $3 million in the 2026-27 budget and $2.5 million in each of the two following years.

Flath and Campbell told the board that those cuts also would free up money to make what they called “strategic investments.” Those investments include fully funding vacancy savings (a requirement under budget guidelines because all budgeted positions must be funded), eliminating deficits in certain LCC subfunds, developing new programs, and funding deferred maintenance and IT capital projects.

The two said the plan depends on financial projections and is not meant as a budget, in the face of criticism from the Lane Community College Education Association, the faculty union, that the college is violating state budget law by offering plans and projections that call for cutbacks.

“Oregon budget law applies to an adopted budget,” Flath said. “It doesn’t apply to financial planning, strategies and policy.”

Flath and Campbell outlined various unknowns that could affect the financial projections: For one, both the faculty union and the Lane Community College Employee Federation, which represents classified employees, are in the midst of contentious contract negotiations with the college. So it’s not known how those finished contracts could affect the numbers. And state funding to LCC could decrease as much as $4.8 million over the next two budget years, but the actual amount likely won’t be known until next March, after the Legislature’s short session. 

The financial projections were challenged by representatives of the faculty union, who argued — among other points — that the projections overestimate salary expenses and underestimate vacancy rates. LCC administrators say their projections are based on trends over the last three to five years. 

The three-year plan does not include suggested areas for cuts, which triggered concern among some board members.

“I feel very uncomfortable not knowing the costs and benefits and the trade-offs of what we’re being asked to do,” said Mulholland, who praised the overall goals of the plan. 

Board member Jerry Rust also wanted to delay a vote on the plan and said he “wouldn’t even mind hearing a challenge” to the board’s 10% policy, “if there are some trade-offs that could be avoided.”

LCC President Stephanie Bulger said the goal is to bring a “transparent” list of possible cuts to the board in March, “with no decisions made. … You’ll be able to see the options for reductions and you can make a decision at that time, but the preplanning is happening right now for the (fiscal year) ’27 budget and so we must do that.”

Board member Steve Mital said he agreed with the fundamentals of the plan, but still voted to wait a month for additional consideration: “I’m going to support this, and at the same time, not sleep well tonight, because I get where this leads.”

Mital, Mulholland, Rust, Jesse Maldonado and Austin Fölnagy voted for the motion to delay the vote on the plan but to authorize continued work on it. Voting against were Kevin Alltucker and Julie Weismann. Weismann noted that board policy requires the creation of the three-year plan and that delaying a decision showed the board “was not thinking about the college’s sustainability or viability.”

Public comments

More than half of the 52 public comments during the meeting criticized LCC’s administration, with many focusing on the contract negotiations. Speakers said the college’s bargaining proposals include cost-of-living adjustments that would not cover the costs of inflation, would transfer health insurance costs to faculty, and would increase faculty workload and class sizes. Two additional bargaining sessions between the college and the faculty union have been scheduled for January.

Bob Bussel, an emeritus professor at the University of Oregon and former director of UO’s Labor Education and Research Center, said LCC’s bargaining approach “may not constitute bad-faith bargaining in a legal sense, but in my view, it falls short of what good-faith bargaining should look like, especially in times like these.”

Other speakers returned to another theme that’s been aired at recent board meetings: The criticism that the administration has siphoned too much power from the board. Some speakers urged board members to seek shared governance.

“Shared governance is hard,” said Mike Urbancic, a senior instructor in economics at UO. “It is tricky, it is difficult, it is frustrating, it is time-consuming and laborious, but it is worth it, because no single group of any of the constituencies, the students, the faculty, the administration, the board, the community, no one has the complete picture.”

Other speakers urged members to guard against shifting operational authority from LCC’s president to the board.

A letter submitted to the board from 45 business and community leaders said, in part, that governing boards “set policy, steward resources and evaluate the president. They do not administer day-to-day operations. When a board crosses that boundary, it compromises institutional integrity, weakens leadership and threatens accreditation.”

Board self-assessment

Wednesday’s meeting also included a brief discussion of a “Culture and Inclusion Assessment” survey board members filled out in the wake of receiving bias, discrimination and harassment training at its Oct. 15 work session.

Members were asked to assess, on a one-to-five scale, the board’s performance in a variety of categories, including “Psychological Safety and Respect,” “Governance Boundaries and Authority” and “Board Effectiveness.”

Fölnagy said the assessment highlighted areas where the board could improve its performance and said the board would work on the assessment later. 

Alltucker said scores under three deserved particular attention from the board. Of the 34 areas that assessed board performance, 14 scored less than three. 

The lowest score was given to this statement: “Board meetings are free from personal attacks, insults or hostile communication,” with a 1.83 rating. The second-lowest score, 2.17, was given to this statement: “Board meetings are productive and focused on strategic priorities.”

The highest score, a perfect five, was given to this statement: “I clearly understand the difference between governance and management.”