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Tough Times Continue for Lamar: Town's Community College Battling Financial Woes; Moves Announced to Prevent the School's Closure.

Posted on: Tuesday, 24 January 2006, 09:00 CST

By Charles Ashby, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

Jan. 24--DENVER - State community college officials dropped a bombshell on Lamar Community College on Monday when they announced the school would not get its own president - at least not for a while.

Instead, Otero Junior College President Jim Rizzuto will take over those duties while retaining his current job.

Nancy McCallin, president of the Colorado Community College System that oversees Lamar, Otero and 11 other two-year colleges in the state, said the move was needed to help stop the bleeding in the school's finances.

McCallin said the last thing she wants to do is close the school, especially in light of this month's closing of Neoplan USA bus maker in Lamar and next month's closing of a La Junta pickle plant.

"We want to make it a viable college," she said. "We don't want to close it. We look at this as a unique way to save the school."

McCallin's announcement, delivered in person to school workers and community leaders in a series of meetings on Monday, didn't sit well with the region's legislative delegation in the statehouse.

Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, and Rep. Wes McKinley, D-Walsh, were downright angry about it.

Brophy, whose district includes Prowers County where the school is located, said the move seems like nothing more than a prelude to closing the school, or at the very least, turning it into a second campus for OJC.

"I am pretty concerned about it," Brophy said. "Obviously, what I don't want is for this to be the first step on the way to closing the doors down there. The timing of this is just God awful unfortunate. While I have a great deal of respect for Rizzuto, and I'm sure he'd do a super job, I'm just not sure this is the right step to be taking."

McKinley said not having its own president "weakens the school." He questioned why the powers that be in Denver weren't doing more to help boost the region's economy, the root cause of LCC's financial woes.

McCallin said that part of the problem at Lamar is its steady drain in enrollment and staff. The school has 1,390 students this school year.

In addition to a 5.2 percent drop in enrollment this school year - that on top of an 8.5 percent drop the prior year - the school has lost 10 major employees in the past few years.

In the 2001-02 school year before the recession hit the state, for example, the school had a president, three vice presidents, three deans, 23 full-time faculty members and 55 full-time staff workers.

This year, the school employs a chief administrative officer, no vice presidents, one dean, 22 full-time faculty, 47 full-time staff who are on the school's payroll and 5 full-time workers whose pay come from grants.

Earlier this month, longtime LCC employee David Shellberg left the school to become vice president at Arapahoe Community College. Shellberg had worked at the school for more than 17 years in varying capacities, most recently as the school's executive vice president.

McCallin said it was that "brain-drain" that concerned her.

She said David Smith, the current chief administrative officer who has been acting president for the past year, will remain in that position.

"We recognize that LCC has made very difficult financial decisions over the last five years as enrollment has dropped and state funds declined," McCallin said. "This plan is intended to ensure the continued viability of LCC in meeting the needs of its students and citizens in Southeastern Colorado."

The lower enrollment at LCC this school year reduced its funding by more than $330,000. McCallin said that cut is on top of the $500,000 in budget reductions since 2001, leaving the school's total general fund and tuition budget at a mere $4.5 million.

The school, which opened in 1937 as the Junior College of Southeastern Colorado, already receives the second highest college stipend among all the state's two-year institutions: $3,376 per student, well above the $2,400 average, McCallin said.

By combining administrative functions with OJC, McCallin said she is hoping to get LCC over its financial doldrums until the region's economy - and the school's - has a chance to bounce back.

Like Brophy and McKinley, state Sen. Ken Kester, R-Las Animas, said he was concerned that Lamar might lose its accreditation as a result of the move, something McCallin said won't happen.

Despite his initial concerns, Kester praised McCallin's choice of using Rizzuto to help fix the problem.

Rizzuto served 16 years in the Colorado Senate, most of that time on the Legislature's Joint Budget Committee. Since becoming Otero's president in 2001, enrollment there has increased 33 percent.

"I hope it will remain a vibrant junior college," Kester said. "I know that the (enrollment) numbers are dropping, but I think that with the right leadership we can revive it, and I think Jim Rizzuto is the person who can do that."

McCallin said Rizzuto would have free rein over the school, but wouldn't commit to how long he will continue to do it.

"We'll have to take it on a year-by-year basis," she said.

Kester said that although Lamar isn't located in his district, some of its employees and students are his constituents. Additionally, anything that affects a part of Southeastern Colorado affects all of Southeastern Colorado, he said.

"On top of everything else, it's just another hit that I hate for them to have to take at this time," Kester said. "Still, the community college director (McCallin) and board need to do what they need to do."

McCallin, Gov. Bill Owens' former budget director who took over the community college system in 2004, came under fire last summer in Longmont and Loveland for the surprise replacement of Front Range Community College President Janet Gullickson, who had been on the job for less than a year.

With no warning, McCallin appointed Karen Reinertson to the post, raising the ire of many local residents. Prior to that appointment, Reinertson was executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing under Owens and budget director for former Gov. Roy Romer.

Meanwhile, the lawmakers said they hoped the Owens administration would be doing something more to combat the problems that led to LCC's enrollment drop.

And while two of the three lawmakers supported Referendum C, they said the move has made it appear that the governor had been disingenuous when he campaigned for the ballot measure in Lamar last year, saying if it didn't pass, colleges would close.

The implication, of course, was that community colleges won't be closed now that Referendum C has passed, the lawmakers said.

The ballot question allows the state to retain billions of dollars in revenues that otherwise would be refunded to taxpayers.

"There's no question that the rural community colleges, in some cases, would have been unable to be sustained on their own," said Owens' press secretary Dan Hopkins. "There's still some problems along those lines. This isn't something that the governor was directly involved because (McCallin) isn't a part of his cabinet. However, it may be that efficiency moves like this are essential if you're to maintain those community colleges. The alternative ultimately would be even worse, and that is to close them."

Still, Hopkins said the governor knows that part of keeping a community like Lamar economically healthy means keeping its community college in place.

"I think that's what Nancy (McCallin) is trying to do," Hopkins said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

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Source: The Pueblo Chieftain

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