Dollars and sense

President Bob Knight had to plead with a docile Fireside Lounge audience to ask questions Thursday morning at his second open forum of the year.

"There's gotta be some other questions, or concerns, or fears, or rumors," Knight said to no one in particular. Drawing silence, Knight chose instead to guess at questions that may have been lurking in the minds of attendees.

The president began the mostly one-sided conversation by reiterating that the college's budget rubric will be key when it comes to cutting functions and services for the 2012-13 academic year. He stressed that staff must continue to do more with less.

"We do continue to ask everybody to be very frugal," Knight said of the potential cuts. "We're going to need every one's cooperation on that."

Knight said that the Legislature is considering implementing a half-cent sales tax increase to help offset the $2 billion revenue shortfall Washington state is facing. He added that he believes this to be a promising development, but that the college could still see cuts as soon as January.

Knight asked staff and faculty to "try to save as much as you can," but gave no timeline for when departments should have their lists of what to cut. He indicated that final decisions must wait until after the results of the Legislature's special session.

Knight said Clark will do anything it can do to save programs. He said that programs could return if there is high enough student demand.

"I'm going to continue to work with my state colleagues to get additional funding down to Clark College, because I don't feel that we are getting the amount of funding that we deserve," he said. He noted that although more than 10,000 full-time equivalent students are enrolled at Clark, community colleges with lower enrollment get more state funding than Clark does.

Knight indicated the lack of funding is something that has been ongoing, and that Clark may not see an uptick at any point in the near future.

"Funding will never get back to the way it was about three or four years ago," he said. "Well less than half of our money comes from the state, so they've put it on the backs of our students."

Knight stated that construction of the STEM building will begin in three to four years. He said the community that Clark serves is one of the fastest growing communities in the state, and that it is a vastly underserved region when it comes to higher education.

Tim Cook clarified financial concerns regarding the creation of the Health Informatics Information Technology transfer degree program, which is available this winter term.

"Informatics was the only program we've added this year, and that was really a repackaging of existing classes. There's no additional cost to offering that program at all. It's not a fair statement to say that we've added programs with additional cost."

Along with thanking Cook and the other attendees who chose to speak up, Knight urged audience members to voice their budget concerns to the Legislature, reminding them that speaking up is "the way the system works."