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The
process used to develop GCC's annual budget is widely perceived as
seriously lacking. It lacks broad input, commitment to policies
that govern it, and a clear focus. These concerns have led
representatives from the Academic Senate to sit down with members of the
administration to try to improve the budget development process.
After some initial discussions early last year, the membership of
this task force was broadened to include representatives from other
campus constituencies in the fall, 2002 semester. As most of you
probably know, the recent proposal they generated was to create a new
governance committee called the College Council.
The College Council was to have broader representation than our
Budget Review Committee. Moreover, it would be charged with
carrying out those elements of the Budget Review Committee's mission
that had been usurped by the
administration. Namely, after the three college vice
presidents put forward their respective area's budget priorities for the
coming year, the BRC is supposed to weigh the requests against expected
revenues and recommend to Campus Executive Committee a complete budget
proposal. In recent years, a budget retreat open only to
administrators has done this work, but the new College Council would
have taken over this vetting of new initiatives and making adjustments
to old programs.
Lastly, the College Council was to have been guided in its
decisions by the college's Master Plan, giving the proceedings a shared
focus.
This proposal for a College Council has run into a buzzsaw of
criticism from many campus sectors. It was seen as an
unnecessarily burdensome extra layer of governance, and was further
disparaged for its awkward attempts to guarantee that members of the
Council would be objective. Instead, it appears that the majority
view among those interested is that the existing Budget Review Committee
can, for example, begin to use the Master Plan more centrally in its
deliberations. Moreover, it was felt that BRC's usurped authority
should be returned to it, rather than delegated to a new entity.
Lastly, if the input to the BRC was too narrow, its membership
could be broadened to feature more representatives from the various
campus constituencies. In short, making the BRC work the way it is
supposed to is seen as preferable to creating a whole new process.
Thus the questions that are now in play focus on how to make the
Budget Review Committee functional. If the committee's membership
is to be expanded, then by how much? Does the committee need a new
chair? Will the Master Plan have to be updated more often to
maintain its relevancy? And, if the major decisions in each year's
budget are to continue to be made at a retreat in May (after the
Governor's Office releases its "May Revise" budget proposal
for the state), who must be invited there to join the collection of
dean-level-or-higher administrators? The whole membership of the
expanded Budget Review Committee? Only some of them? What
about division chairs? What about the members of the executive
committees of the Senate, and our CSEA and AFT locals? Hey, what
about you?
Employees' views on these questions are important. Please
communicate with your leaders about how you would like to see things
work. While you are at it, let the administration know what you
think. It's time to clean house! &
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