CNC Faces Budget Shortfall
Friday, January 25, 2013 @ 4:09 PM
Prince George B.C. – The College of New Caledonia is facing another budget crunch, one that could result in early retirements and voluntary severance packages for some staff.
The early budget scenario for the 2013/14 year paints a picture of a $1 million dollar shortfall if no action is taken to curb costs. The shortfall , says Penny Fahlman, CNC’s Vice President of Finance and Administration, is the result of funding not keeping pace with rising costs “Once again the college is facing unavoidable higher costs due to the impact of inflation and increases in costs for building and equipment maintenance, software, utilities, and more.”
The rising costs include the wage increase provided in the new contract with CUPE. The College was told by the Province that the contract increase would have to be covered through savings in existing budgets. That increase translates to about $100 thousand for the 2013/14 budget, or 10% of the predicted shortfall.
CNC’s Manager of Communications, Randall Heidt, says the College has already heard from some support staff and faculty who are interested in either retiring or taking a voluntary severance package but it is too early to say how many will follow that path.
CNC President John Bowman says he will present a preliminary suite of options and recommendations to deal with the budget challenge at the February 22nd meeting of the Board “These options will include a combination of reduced expenditures, reallocations of unused budgets, and inclusion of deferred and other revenues in the budget as well as a limited number of early retirement incentives and voluntary severance packages.”
The Board will also be asked to approve a tuition hike of up to 2%. A similar increase last year generated about $100 thousand dollars.
The college solved a $2.3-million projected budget shortfall in 2012/13, and submitted a $48 million balanced operating budget.
Comments
Just hold a Bollywood awards ceremony….the govt will trip over their own feet to find you $12million or so.
How about a name change? No more CNC, how about Christy Clarke College….that should be good enough for a couple $mil?? Imagine all the people driving by each and every day and reading the name….way better than a little campaign sign.
Obviously the CNC board has to learn how to lick the hand that feeds it.
How about College no Credit
Maybe a trip to China to see if a few more Yen can be squeezed out of those good folks wanting to learn in a Canadian school. Pretty sure the mayor can pony up some funds, IPG could cough up the bucks to make it worth wild.
At first I thought it read City faces budget shortfall. That will be next …
So CNC is looking at 2% rise in user fee ….
Can the City beat that? … I am sure they can.
This is just another indication that it is the end of the line for the Provincial Government, Municipalities, Universities, Colleges, Schools, etc when it comes to increased costs every year.
You cannot have increased costs every year. Especially if the people who pay taxes to support these groups are not getting any increases, and if you factor in the increases in service fee’s, retail items, groceries, gas, hydro, etc; etc, they are actually taking home less money.
So the sooner they come to the conclusion that the gravy train has pulled into the station the better.
Maybe Bowman could cut his salary by 100k that might help!
So the end of the line to provincial government municipalities, universities, colleges,schools, etc.? How about adding in medical services, social services? Do you like living in Canada? Do you enjoy the benefits of living in Canada?
I talked with a TA from a BC university today – guess what? She came to Canada because the university education here is half the cost of what she pays in the United States.
Where is the money for post-secondary education in BC? in Canada in whole? The argument for post-secondary education has a loud voice all across Canada currently, pick up any paper and you will hear the voice heard in BC echoed in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, …
With Prince George – fund the municipality properly or contract services out to a private corporation(likely foreign owned) who invests nothing back into the local economy, especially with regards to upgrades and maintenance to infrastructure. Why? We already own the assets outright and our municipal tax dollars go to maintain these assets. Why would we sell what we already own to someone that will come in to our city, buy up our assets and seek to make a profit?
It’s time people wake up. There is so much that goes back and forth and things get lost in the arguments. I see it on here all the time, which is why I have held off on posting for so long.
Public services are public; publicly funded, publicly owned!! Low user costs across the board – city, provincial, federal. Sell off one, it’s all open to sell off.
Raise tuition! It is incredibly cheap in the whole sceme of things!
scheme
By not providing enough funding, that might be what the Ministry in charge of post secondary education is telling the institutions – if you cannot run the programs with the current government support and tuition levels … the either figure out some service reductions/re-alignments or raise tuition or get an endowment to rename the College to the Rustad College.
That day of naming rights may not be far off.
One of the issues CNC has is that like all public post-secondary institutions, they are restricted to a maximum of 2% raise in tuition each year. To make matters worse, CNC had some of the lowest tuition costs in the province when the provincial government legislated the tuition increase restrictions, meaning that CNC has never been able to catch up to other colleges.
This is also an indicator of skewed priorities on the part of the provincial government. If they had spent just 20% less on the roof replacement for BC Place they could have funded this shortfall for the next 100 years. I’ve never set foot inside of BC Place and probably won’t: the roof replacement only benefits a select few who are sports enthusiasts, live in the lower mainland, and can afford the cost of entry to big ticket events.
Post-secondary education, on the other hand, is money well spent in terms of subsidization. The data is clear that individuals with college or univeristy education make more, spend more (thus supporting private business), and pay more in taxes (thus supporting social services) compared to those with just high school.
Education, whether in professional programs (e.g., nursing), academic programs (arts & sciences), or trades (a really good area to get into right now) is a fantastic investment in human capital and growth. To suggest that we should cut back in this area is ludicrous.
I have a “budget shortfall” every month. No tears for me?
UserXYZ: “I talked with a TA from a BC university today – guess what? She came to Canada because the university education here is half the cost of what she pays in the United States. “
Post secondary education is heavily subsidized in Canada, although many fail to realize actually how good we have it.
Just another area where people need a major wake up call/reality check.
Well said Krusty. Johnny is in favour of more headlines that read “skilled worker shortage”….the reality is our city needs more accessible and affordable post secondary education.
CNC has become financially unsustainable especially after the creation of UNBC which is competing with CNC for the limited declining number of students in the Prince George and Northern BC region.
UNBC is also financially unsustainable with growing deficits. A synergy between CNC and UNBC and creation of a college-university was the appropriate path to take in the 90’s.
But “research oriented” UNBC (with prof salaries up to $130K) will strongly resist to be demoted into a more applied college university now (with prof salaries capped to $75K) and CNC cannot justify becoming a college university without full participation of UNBC.
The Darwinian solution at this time is for CNC and UNBC competing for the resources until (1) one dies of lack of resources (2) both die of lack of resources (3) one migrate to another region.
As it has been advised before publicly, the Bowman administration in CNC should seriously consider moving or opening branches in Kelowna and Greater Vancouver region by closing all its branches outside PG. CNC can apply for BC funding and free land for infrastructure building in lower mainland.
Ah, now the Liberal accord is clear…move to Kelowna & the lower mainland….that explains why there is no support from them. CC speaks about her support for training….where is it? Yes, in Kelowna and the lower mainland. I’ll remember on voting day.
univ. I agree with you 100%. Seems most people on this site, and in the City of Prince George are not aware of the financial situation, or the student situation facing the University and College.
These people seem to think than you can keep funding the increased costs of these facilities, while the student numbers in the school district, college and university keep declining.
Some how or other they seem to be incapable of doing some research, asking some questions, and coming to some conclusions. Rather they just keep repeating the same Horse S over and over, and never seem to have a suggestion on how to solve a problem, other that to have taxpayers pick up the tab.
This inane way of looking at things, seems to be a confliction that is primarily a Prince George confliction. Same thing applied to the building of the excessive Police Station, Community Energy System, River Road Dike, Airport Runway Expansion, Boundry Road, etc; People think that Prince George is rolling in money, when in fact it is very close to being bankrupt.
We have high paid help telling us everyday that things are going to get better, but this hype is never backed up with solid facts.
We are in what Pierre Trudeau once referred to as Dire Straights. Problem is the majority of people in this town just ignore the situation, or worse yet, are not even aware of it.
Off the to Winter Games, what the hell, live, laugh, love and be merry, because to-morrow you may be dead, seems to be the Mantra.
Cnc is on the prowl for more International students….say good bye to the community college. International students are a cash cow paying 3 to 10x the tuition than a local student taking the same course. So who are they going to pick to fill the course? The 2500.00 local or the 25,000 international student?
How about the BUY OUTS for people that are leaving anyway to retire??
palopu, the management in Prince George public institutions are spending like drunks and addicts, even to the extent of inflating the numbers to get/steal extra money from the BC government and the MLAs and MPs of this city are contributing to this wasteful spending. Vote for your MLA and s/he will bring more money to build more half empty buildings.
Management is an art, and you cannot put someone in charge of millions of Dollars because he is the friend of this or that MLA in the BC party or is affiliated with this or that interest group. I have seen several instances in Prince George, where the guy with good performance was let go and the guy with poor performance got his contract renewed for another 5 years (e.g. in 2012).
Prince George is a safe haven for wasteful spending and promotion of bad managers and demotion of good managers.
You are correct about management being an art univ, but the minute you involve a union and the government you double the operating costs! Youi can not measure productivity so you are doomed from the start!
You are correct about management being an art univ, but the minute you involve a union and the government you double the operating costs! Youi can not measure productivity so you are doomed from the start!
I have written about this union rep in PG who insulted the grieving employee and signed a settlement to fire the employee and the union kept the union rep and the employer rewarded the union rep by promoting him to an administration position, overseeing 100s of employees. There is corruption in government, unions and administrations.
I have also seen countries where unions don’t exist or are banned and the government dictates everything to the public employees. When you have a government in a province or institution that does not dictate, but bargains, then you need a partner for bargaining (i.e. a union).
I would rather have bigger unions bargaining with the government for all univ professors like CUPE across BC and we do not replicate bargaining 10 or 100 times across universities, schools and
….
Concerning productivity, in a car dealership you don’t promote an employee with foul language, you promote and reward the employee who has sold more cars and is not a jerk. If the manager rewards the guy who has sold less cars, the dealership goes bankrupt.
Similarly, you can measure the productivity of a university VP or dean by the no of student enrollments. If you renew the contract of the manager under his watch the enrollments has declined,
and not renew the contract of the manager whose enrollment numbers have gone up, then the university’s total enrollments goes down. This is not rocket science and it is simple arithmetic, but the majority of managers and board members in PG do not follow this simple rule.
And you can measure the productivity of a research prof by the no of research papers published or amount of grant money; or no of graduate students graduated … , and so on.
Measurement is a science and a GOOD manager knows how to utilize it to improve the sales, the enrollments, the performance and productivity.
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