Michael Rutschky
Published: February 22, 2006
This year PJC plans to spend more than $48.4 million to maintain its operations. In order for the school to organize its funds and plan for the upcoming fiscal year, the faculty must decide upon an operating budget.
The budget itself is compiled by various areas of the administration, such as planning, fiscal resources, and business affairs, according to Gean Ann Emond, vice president of business affairs. These different areas work separately to come up with a budgeting strategy that pertains to their individual department needs.
Then, the different areas gather to formulate an overall operating budget, taking into account the needs of each individual area, as well as the goals of the school in general. Once the budget is complete, the school waits for state legislature to allocate the funds that are needed.
The process of creating the operating budget might seem incredibly arduous, but as Emond explained, it isn’t as much trouble as it sounds.
“It could be overwhelming if you think about it. It is an awful lot of money,” Emond said, “And it’s all taxpayer money, for the most part, and student fees. The people at the college have a responsibility to the taxpayers, to the students, to do the best job that we can do with those dollars that they’ve given us.”
About 73 percent of the $49.1 million expected in revenue this year comes from state support, while about 25 percent is collected from student fees such as tuition, lab fees and application fees.
As far as revenue goes, the school is doing quite well for having just survived two extremely crushing hurricane seasons, Emond said. Usually it takes about three years for schools to fiscally recover from such devastating weather. Although PJC has taken a hit from declining enrollment, the state has helped to boost the school’s recovery by allocating an extra $439,219 in tuition refunds.
PJC’s share of state lottery funds amounts to nearly $3.6 million.
“There are three sources of funds [to be allocated],” said Vance Land of the PJC business department, who wrote a dissertation on the lottery’s funding of public schools. “The funds go to the winners of the games, then to administration of the lottery and then is distributed to education.”
So what does PJC spend $48.4 million on? The budget’s allotted expenditures include $36.5 million, or about 75 percent, towards personnel costs, including payroll from administrators to faculty, technical support and student assistants. Expenses to maintain the college, like travel, utilities and maintenance amount to about $11.7 million or 24 percent of the budget. And capital outlay, like learning materials for the library is about $180,000.