Money is getting tight at NorthWest Arkansas Community College.
The college recently started a process to cut $1.8 million from annual expenditures in part because of a 2.2 percent decline in enrollment. Fewer students enrolled means less money to spend. Financial projections also anticipate a decline in funding from the college’s millage and no growth in funding from the state.
College offcials have smartly instituted a freeze on open positions, but we were a bit perplexed by explanations of a newly adopted process President Becky Paneitz said will determine whether positions should be re-filled as they become open.
One might think the college would have long had a process that evaluated immediately whether a position is needed when an opening occurs. That’s standard procedure in most businesses.
Nothing demands efficiency quite like a lack of money to pay the bills, except, of course, in Congress.
The revenue squeeze has also prompted the college to eliminate a $250,000 market equity adjustments fund previously created for 2013.
Yeah, that sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook to us, too, but would you a believe college officials sent this newspaper a note asking us to call it a “market equity adjustments” fund rather than a pot of money from which they planned to give administrators raises next year?
Let’s call a manual earth actuator a manual earth actuator (or a spade a spade, if you will).
We’re not sorry to see that part of the budget slashed at all. The best thing about the administrator pay raise fund is its existence made for an easy budget cut when it was clear the college needed to tighten the reins.
The good news is the college appears to be responding to get its spending plan in alignment with the expected revenue. It’s always unfortunate when an institution of higher education sees a bit of a downturn, but they have to be responsive to the demand.
It’s worth noting the adopted budget includes $1.2 million from the college’s $5.8 million fund balance, or reserves. That’s a reasonable move to get over a hump of declining income, but the situation will have to be closely monitored.
Paneitz says the budget will be reviewed again following enrollment for the spring.
We hope that brings good news for the college.
CASUALTIES OF WAR
To honor the men and women in our armed forces and remind our readers of their sacrifices, the Northwest Arkansas Times and Springdale Morning News are publishing Department of Defense announcements identifying Americans killed in active military operations.
Two Marines died Sept. 15, while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Killed were Lt. Col. Christopher K. Raible, 40, of Huntingdon, Pa., assigned to Marine Attack Squadron211, Marine Aircraft Group 13, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward); and Sgt. Bradley W. Atwell, 27, of Kokomo, Ind., assigned to Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 13, Marine Aircraft Group 13, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward). Army Sgt. Jason M. Swindle, 24, of Cabot died Sept. 20 in Panjwa’l, Afghanistan, of injuries suftered when he was attacked by a rocket propelled grenade while on mounted patrol. Swindle was assigned to 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, in Fort Stewart, Ga.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 10/15/2012