The Scurry County Junior College District board met Monday afternoon and much of the discussion focused on Western Texas College’s (WTC) financial situation.
Chief Financial Officer Patricia Claxton reported that a large expense related to student housing was due to remodeling apartments at the school.
“We re-did the apartments. It’s completed,” she said. “It’s completed and everything. The actual expense was like $182,750. Since we were there in the depths of it, there were two apartments that the electrical going into the apartments was horrible, so we had Dale’s Electric come and redo the conduit.”
Claxton confirmed that the project did not include work inside the apartments, but the college is collecting quotes to refurbish the apartments’ interiors.
Claxton said the decision to take college classes online is contributing to an “okay” financial position.
“The regular fees, we’re okay because we went online,” she said. “As long as our enrollment stays up. We’ll have to wait and see how that works out, because we won’t start fall registration until July 8.”
Claxton said the college might receive less money from the state in the short term.
“Our main concern about revenue right now is going to be our tax dollars and state appropriations, because the state itself has taken a hit in sales tax lost overall,” she said. “So that’s what we’re working on (in the) budget. We’re going to hope our enrollment stays the same. It’s going to be a challenging budget this year.”
College staff have been conservative with budget requests, she said.
“All the budgets have pretty much been turned in, and nobody’s requesting anything. Everybody knows right now, it’s tight. Don’t request. In fact, be prepared to do cuts,” she said. “Every budget that’s been submitted, nobody has said, ‘Oh, I must have this,’ or ‘I need this.’ It’s going to be, not ‘that you want it, but do you need it?’ But our main responsibility is to educate the students, so if it’s something that’s needed, we’ll do it.”
WTC President Dr. Barbara Beebe said she recently gave the college’s coaches clearance to recruit athletes within the state of Texas.
“A lot of colleges are trying to figure out what they’re going to do for the fall semester. We don’t have a crystal ball. It’s really a tough call,” she said. “I just made the call last week to let the coaches go out and recruit in Texas. We’re not allowing them to bring any students back to campus yet, but they can go out and recruit if they want.”
The board re-elected its current officers for an additional term, including Lee Presswood, president, Eddie Peterson, vice-president and Drew Bullard, secretary. Newly re-elected member Mike McWilliams took the oath of office for his new term. Bullard is also due to be sworn in, but was absent from the meeting due to illness.