Riverland to see 4 percent budget cut

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s announcement Tuesday about his plans to take care of this year’s $356 million budget shortfall sent a tremor through the offices of many entities across the state. At Riverland Community College, news that their budget would be reduced by 4 percent came around 11 a.m. Tuesday morning.

&uot;The basic state allocation will be reduced by $505,332,&uot; Jim Davis, president of Riverland, said. &uot;This is 4 percent of our annual budget, but at this time in the year it amounts to about 10 percent of our budget.&uot;

The school is more than halfway through their year and have already begun their second semester. Davis said the college, still recovering from the news, has yet to make any decisions on how the college will make cuts.

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&uot;We’ve been working on places where we could save some money,&uot; he said. &uot;But we can’t really hold back on spending for materials in our classroom.&uot;

Davis said that teachers’ salaries are in contract, so they can’t be changed.

&uot;We are going to try to do it with the least amount of pain possible, but it will probably cause some,&uot; he said. &uot;At this point we know that our number-one priority is to hold on to our technical programs.&uot;

The new proposed fine arts degree will probably not be put on hold, Davis said, because it doesn’t cost the school nearly as much as some other programs do due to materials.

&uot;This will affect some of our programs in small-business management and farm management because of the fact that some of the set aside money from the state helps the farmers with the tuition on those courses,&uot; he said.

Davis was otherwise vague about what would be cut.

&uot;As far as the rest of it we’ll have to look at our books and see what we can cut out,&uot; he said. &uot;We haven’t made any hard decisions yet.&uot;

The decisions will be made by the end of the month, according to Davis.

&uot;The problem is that we have an increase for our student body,&uot; he said. &uot;There’s no way that this doesn’t affect students.&uot;

Davis did not say whether it would raise tuition.

Being only one-tenth of the major reductions that have yet to come, this round of changes is but a training session on how to cut.

&uot;This cut will be larger next year,&uot; Davis said. &uot;It will carry into next year and we expect an additional, larger cuts to come.&uot;