Thursday November 16, 2023

Dear Campus Community,

Today we are delivering our second memo regarding our annual planning process.  Thank you for your patience as we have been working diligently to gather and synthesize this information for you.

Budget Modifications

It is because of the engagement and work of the budget managers, combined with input from staff across departments at the College, that we at Shoreline have been able to create a comprehensive view of our overall fiscal needs. We want to thank everyone for sharing your institutional knowledge, and for your time in creating a Budget Plan which has been approved by the Board of Trustees. 

Our goal was to construct a process which would largely correct budget errors from last year and, within our limited means, create budgets that better reflect the needs in each area of the College. To do this we employed a strategy called “incremental budgeting” which means we examined the amount spent last year and used it as a starting point for the current year’s budgeting conversations. 

When a budget is created each year, estimates are made for what each area expects to spend.  As we go through the annual budget review process, we determine if the estimated amounts are correct, or if each area has over or underspent.  If over/underspending occurs, budget adjustments need to be made and taken into consideration for the future. If we were to have approved all the adjusted amounts for this year, then the total budget amount would have equaled $55,048,640. This would have been an amount equal to $1,167,025 over the Board approved amount of $53,881,615.

However, through the diligent work of our budget managers and the Budget Office in locating expected reductions in needed costs throughout the departments, we were able to reduce our adjustments, so the total budgeted amount equaled $53,990,330, which is a difference in the amount of $108,715 and within the 1% flexible budget authority granted by the Board of Trustees.

The Executive Team and Area-Leads met with the Budget Office to review every area line-by-line given the total budgeted amount we could work within.  In this analysis, several improvements were made to last year’s rollover budget.  These included items like:

• Corrections for costs on salaries that were inaccurate
• Adjustments for expenses charged to incorrect departments
• Reduced budgets in areas where budgeted amount was no longer needed
• Reviewed and updated budgets to align with new managers and appropriate areas 
• Improved our expense transfer process which allows us to align expenses with the right budget amount for improved tracking 

This year’s work is moving us toward a process where all of us can be better stewards of our own budgets.  As stated in the Strategic Planning Budget Council (SPBC’s) guiding principles, the budget is the responsibility of the campus as a whole.  Though we weren’t able to say yes to everything, we are continually looking for avenues (e.g., grants, alternate contracts, community partnerships) so that we can say yes to items that serve our community and are reflections of our goals and planning. Until then, we thank you for your partnership in realizing our strategic budget plan and ensuring that we are good fiscal stewards for the College.

We will continue to finetune and improve processes as we go. This fiscal year we will add:

• Proactive monthly reporting from the budget office 
• Controls to prevent overspending
• Increased communication with the Budget Office: The Budget Office will make departmental budget changes after consulting with the budget manager. 

Thank you to everyone for being integral to this process, and for sharing your knowledge with us so that we can better serve our students and our community.

Budget uploads should be available in ctcLink later this month.  

Annual Planning

Perhaps the most important part of the Annual Planning process is ensuring that each area has the structure, support, and plan to work on area goals throughout the year to ensure they move their goals forward. To aid with this process:

• The Executive Team has prioritized big picture projects based on your suggestions in the Area Reviews (see chart below).
  • Please note that these are big picture projects only; however, there are many smaller projects happening within areas per the Area Reviews. For Instruction and Student Services, because there is so much work happening and projects ongoing, we have tried to capture “themes” vs. specifics the way we did in other units. The specifics are reflected in the Area Reviews for those units, of course. There just wasn’t room to capture them all here. 

Each ET representative will work with faculty, budget managers, and staff on the items listed above and will continue to prioritize items within their respective units, updating the campus regularly about their progress. Updates will be delivered:

• In monthly Community Meeting 
• In weekly emails (as appropriate)
• In monthly Faculty Program Coordinator (FPC) and Division Planning Committee (DPC) meetings 
• At Faculty Senate Council, when Dr Rucks and I visit 

The Office of Instruction also will host monthly Faculty Planning Coordinator (FPC) meetings to facilitate workshops to monitor progress and goal plan for the future. Through the Area Review process for 2024/25, we will first consider interventions implemented in the last year, and then utilizing new data in concert with last year’s review, we will make requests for faculty positions and equipment for 24/25. From there, the monthly meetings will focus on completing the 24/25 Area Reviews to ensure that learning outcomes assessment, curriculum, and other faculty projects move forward with support.

Recruitment & Hiring Updates:

Per Planning Memo #1, the College already has begun moving forward with the following position requests approved in the 2023/24 budget process: 

• Hiring of additional Student Ambassadors/Peer Mentors for International Education
• Increasing the Senior Graphic Designer back to 100% FTE Funding 
• Reclassifying Financial Aid Staff (from Customer Service Specialist 2 to Program Specialist 2 positions)
• Hiring a new Campus Security Officer position 

Executive Team (ET) also has been able to pool together temporary funding  (primarily from Guided Pathways funds and a small amount of operational funds which we hope will be reimbursed by Title III grant funds) for a 2^nd Research Analyst position in Planning & Institutional Effectiveness (PIE) (this was #1 on the unfunded prioritized position requests) which will focus on rebuilding data, reports, and dashboards lost in the ransomware incident- all of which is needed for grant reporting, as well as accreditation purposes. 

Moving forward, to ensure the College is completing thoughtful and consistent analysis around personnel recruitment requests and is working within our allocated budget, ET has authorized the creation of a “Hiring Criteria” form for completion by position supervisors when requesting approval to recruit for a vacant position. The Hiring Criteria form will be supplemental to the Personnel Requisition form and used by ET to evaluate requests for recruitment of both new and replacement positions. 

Criteria considered when determining if a position will be filled include such things as whether the position is legally/contractually required, how it supports the President’s Goals, whether similar positions exist already, impact if the position is not filled, etc. Should a position not be approved to move forward with recruitment, the funding will then be applied to the remaining unfunded prioritized position requests from the 2023-24 budget request process.   The position also may be determined to be funded at a later time depending on the urgency of the positions on the priority list.

Lastly, the College will continue to assess our fiscal situation at the end of each quarter to determine if new funding (from revenue, etc.) is in place and could potentially be applied to remaining unfunded, prioritized position needs. Updates regarding new funding for positions will continue to be shared via campus updates and Planning Memo communications. 

Conclusion

Once again and I would like to thank you for your time and attention to this new planning process.  I know it took a lot of effort from everyone, but I truly believe that it will make the College stronger.  I am excited to see your projects come to fruition so that we may better serve our students and our community, and I look forward to seeing what the future holds.

Best Wishes,

Jack