Deficit woes continue to grow

By Ben Holbrook
Critic Editor

Exclusive interview with Carol Moore sheds more light on the crisis.

Lyndon State College continues to face budget challenges due to a loss of state appropriations.
At the end of the 2007-2008 academic year, LSC was attempting to balance a budget that was in the red between $500,000 and $1 million. Fortunately, the school was able to balance the budget only to have the state take back about $200,000 of the state appropriations that each Vermont school receives, Wayne Hamilton, Dean of administration, said.
LSC has to eliminate only about $100,000 from the budget in order to have everything be balanced. One of the biggest challenges with cutting money from the budget is to, “focus primarily on areas that least impact student services,” President Carol Moore said. The choice to eliminate a position in the library was made based on this strategy since it would impact the students the least, Moore said.
The decision to cut the library position was a strategic decision because, “rather than across the board cuts we used strategic cuts because across the board cuts never pay off,” Moore said.
Eliminating the library position saves the school $34,000 but other cuts were also necessary in order to balance the budget. Those cuts included some temporary custodial positions and equipment cuts.
Moore said staff and faculty had asked why the school couldn’t stop the construction project in order to use that money to balance the budget. The school cannot use the bond money for anything besides the building and renovations Moore said. This is because additional student fees pay for the bond.
Faculty and staff members reacted strongly to eliminating a position and offered ideas for other alternatives such as giving up salary increases. However, Moore said all salary increases are contractual and therefore, employees cannot voluntarily give them up. Patricia Shine, Professor of Psychology, spoke out against the position cut, “it is a nightmare up here to lose your job,” she said.
Making personnel cuts is never easy but it was necessary in order to come up with the $100,000, Moore said. “Anybody is welcome to look at the budget but ultimately the decision is the dean’s and mine,” Moore said. Even with the current deficit relieved, the problems may not be over for LSC. In November, LSC may again be asked to come up with more money, which could result in more cuts, Moore said. If it becomes necessary to once again make cuts in November then, “we have not targeted any positions, we will wait and see what happens,” Moore said.
The employee who was laid off from the library will receive severance pay, and will get help with being relocated, Moore said.
Recruitment and retention have always been important to the growth of LSC and this year retention rates were higher than in previous years, although recruitment was down, Hamilton said however, Castleton and Johnson are both having record enrollment years.
Not all is bad news though for LSC because Project Compass will put into place nine different student success interventions to help needy students, Moore said.
The meeting concluded with Moore calling on faculty and staff to, “Focus on the good things going on at Lyndon and at our students being successful.”