PRESS RELEASE
May 11, 2009                                                              Contact: Frank Murray, 542-4835

Columbia Basin College will reduce its 2010 fiscal operations budget by $3,443,000.  The cuts will reduce enrollment by up to one thousand full-time equivalent (FTE) students, cut 55 staff and faculty positions, and discontinue four programs as a result of state budget cuts.  Fiscal year 2010 begins July 1, 2009.  The total cut is about 14 percent of CBC’s state allocation for operating budget.  A 22-member budget reduction committee consisting of staff and faculty met for six months and recommended areas for reduction to President Rich Cummins, who also worked with senior staff to determine the specific cuts to be made. 

Program cuts include the loss of the CBC Autobody, Paralegal, Human Services, and daytime Fire Science programs.  The programs will remain open next year for first-year students who choose to continue into their second year.  The Fire Science program will continue its evening program unchanged. 

The hit to the Academic Transfer and Basic Skills divisions is even larger than the program cuts in Career and Technical Education.  Major reductions ($300-$400,000) are being made in Adult Basic Education (ABE), GED, and English as a Second Language.  $800,000 -$1 million is being cut from Academic Transfer courses.  In addition, Administrative Services is being trimmed by $1.7 million. Of the 55 positions being eliminated, nine are full-time faculty, 27 are full-time staff positions, and 19 are part-time positions.

The state also took nearly $17 million from the college’s capital construction projects.  CBC will begin construction of its new Center for Career and Technical Education in June.  The $22 million project will lose $1 million.  The nearly completed Business Building remodel lost its annual maintenance allocation of $86,000, which will have to be absorbed elsewhere in the budget, as it represents an additional unfunded mandate.  The Social Science and World Languages Center, approved for construction in the 2011 biennium, also fell under the budget knife.  CBC will lose $1.4 million in design costs and the remaining construction costs of just over $14 million have been zeroed out.  The project is no longer on the state’s capital construction project list. 
 
The state is increasing the cost of tuition by seven percent for the 2009-2010 school year and another seven percent the following year.  The increase will only reduce CBC’s budget reduction by about four percent.  The tuition increases were figured into CBC’s final budget reduction.