The new $31 million operating budget for fiscal year 2020 approved by the Jefferson College Board of Trustees June 13 includes a 2 percent salary increase for full-time and part-time employees and is projected to increase reserves by an additional $306,000.
What the budget does not include is any funding to repair the pool on the college’s Hillsboro campus, a disappointing decision for a small but vocal group of residents who have been trying to save the pool.
The balanced budget is largely coming about through a tuition increase and cost-cutting measures, Jefferson College President Ray Cummiskey said.
“We’re in a good position at a difficult time,” he said. “We think it’s a very responsible budget.”
Board members voted 5-0 to approve the FY20 budget. The new budget includes a $6-per-credit-hour tuition increase to $112 (for in-county resident students).
Technology fees also are increasing by $6 to $16.
The college’s budget year runs from July 1 to June 30. The new operating budget shows an increase from those of the past two fiscal years, which both had been set at $30.2 million.
College officials said spending money on the pool did not make good financial sense.
The pool has been closed since May 9, after an engineer inspected the facility and found serious structural problems on the pool deck, among other issues.
“The repairs on the pool are not in the budget,” board president Steve Meinberg said. “The pool is just kind of on hold. We’ll close it for safety.”
Daryl Gehbauer, the college’s vice president of finance and administration, said it would be too costly to fix the pool’s problems.
“We don’t have a half-million dollars to repair it,” Gehbauer said.
He said the natatorium will remain a closed-off area until college leaders decide what to do with it.
“It’s a 23,000-square-foot space we need to look at,” he said.
The future of the natatorium, located in the college’s Field House, has been under discussion for several years.
When the topic has been listed on the board’s agenda, up to about 50 pool supporters have attended to plead their case to keep it open.
But at the June 13 meeting, only a handful of pool supporters attended.
However, they made it known they are not pleased.
“They have not maintained it properly,” said Janet Hirsch, a Lake Tishomingo resident who has served as spokeswoman for the pool supporters.
“It should have lasted 40 to 50 years.”
The pool opened in 1982, so it is 37 years old.
Hirsch also said she believes the college has money to dedicate to natatorium repairs. “What about the surplus money?” she said.
Hirsch reminded the board that the natatorium was “approved by a vote of the citizens of Jefferson County (as one of the items funded through a 1980 bond issue).”
Another pool supporter, Rose Ann Cole of De Soto, said she feels let down by the board.
“It’s shirking your responsibility to the community,” she said. “They just dumped us, that’s all.”
Meinberg said Hirsch should not categorize the projections for revenue over expenses as “surplus.”
“We don’t have a surplus,” he said. “We have a reserve. The money is to protect the college,” he said.
At their May 9 meeting, board members received an alarming report about the pool from Mike Alberswerth, senior structural engineer at the IMEG Corp. engineering firm of St. Louis.
He said wobbly sections could collapse under people walking on the pool’s deck and pointed out numerous other structural concerns.
Budget information
Other points of interest in the FY20 budget:
■ An enrollment decline of 4 percent is forecast from fall 2018 to fall 2019 – a drop of 43,170 to 41,400 in credit hours and in student enrollment from 4,425 to 4,250.
■ The $306,000 to be added to the college’s reserves will bring the total to $5.76 million, or 18.2 percent of budgeted revenues (up from the 16.1 percent of budgeted revenues in the FY19 budget).
■ Cummiskey will see his salary as college president increase from $217,889 in the current budget to $225,580 in the new one. He is slated to retire at the end of the 2019-2020 school year on June 30, 2020.
■ Dena McCaffrey’s salary will increase from her current $105,947 as dean of Career and Technical Education to $145,000 as president-elect in the new budget. The board in February selected her to succeed Cummiskey as president on July 1, 2020.
■ Capital project spending in the FY20 budget includes $1,389,513 for infrastructure repair/replacement.
The costliest project will replace the Field House roof at a budgeted price of $450,000.
Board member Krystal Hargis did not attend the June 13 meeting.