CHAPARRAL

Spring semester started and it is good to see students around the campus. We missed them during winter session.   We had a classified employees meeting on December 1—finally!!!  Definitely, the credit goes to Dr. Dawn Lindsay.  We had great attendance, with approximately 100 people attending.  The meeting was planned without taking into consideration that the first Tuesday of each month is also when division meetings are held, so we missed administrative assistants from the instructional area.   For spring semester, there are two meetings scheduled.  Thanks to Ron Nakasone, Dr. Rick Perez and Dr. Mary Mirch for updating classified employees on Student and Instructional Services areas, although Ron had nothing promising to say about the state budget, just a depressing prognosis, but we all know the state budget is in a terrible mess right now.

     CSEA started signature gathering efforts to place the On-Time Budget Act initiative on the November 2010 ballot. This initiative will help end budget gridlock in Sacramento, hold legislators accountable, and protect California families and businesses from the devastating impact of late state budgets.  For the past 20 years, Sacramento has failed to meet its constitutional obligation to adopt a budget by June 15.  Only three states in the country require a two-thirds majority vote on the budget, and they are California, Rhode Island and Arkansas.  The initiative would allow a majority of the legislators to enact a state budget, as it is done in 47 other states.

     Politicians will be penalized and lose their pay and perks for each day that they fail to meet their constitutional obligation to adopt a budget by June 15. The On-Time Budget initiative would change only the vote requirement for a budget, but still would keep the two-thirds vote requirement on taxes, which makes it more difficult for legislators to raise our taxes.

     The accreditation team will arrive soon, and hopefully the college will be accredited, meeting acceptable levels of quality in providing education and training.   I would like to take this opportunity to thank John Queen and Jill Lewis for their hard work in the process of producing the accreditation report, with the help of all constituent groups.

In Unity,
Saodat Aziskhanova 

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