Public Raises No Questions
The only debate about the Santa Clarita Community College District raising its tax rate was carried on among the trustees on Tuesday night.
It ended with the adoption of a 1977-78 budget carrying an eightcent tax increase after a public hearing in the campus board room drew few observers and less comment.
When the board president Louis Reiter asked for the audience’s comments based on the publication budget, Richard Powers of Valencia provided the only response. He asked where that document had been published.
An abbreviated budget ran in The Signal, Reiter said, and the College of the Canyons administration also had copies on file.
Local attorney Daniel Hon arrived late, after the four trustees -Kevin Lynch-was absent -- adopted the budget with a new total tax rate of $1.23 (from the previous $1.15). So his intent to question the tax increase was out of order, Reiter informally said. Others in the 20-member audience included perhaps a dozen college employees. No one else addressed the board.
The governing board first heard of a proposed tax increase at its July 19 meeting. Trustee Carl Boyer III objected then and did not change his stand on Tuesday. Again, Boyer cast the only vote against the budget’s approval.
Board president Reiter traded comments with Boyer; the two other trustees and college administrators kept quiet. The adopted budget foresees expenditures of $4.9 million, some $800,000 more than the actual spending in last year’s fiscal package.
Boyer offered an amendment to the budget’s adoption which would have had the administration retrieve not less than $50,000 from spending categories and place the unspent funds in reserve. The proposal received no seconding motion and so died.
Later in the meeting, Boyer said he would vote to approve the budget if four votes were necessary. Superintendent-President Robert Rockwell said a majority would do, so Boyer voted against the budget’s adoption. Trustees Reiter, Francis Chaffey, and Peter Huntsinger gave it approval.
Before the vote was taken, Boyer pointed to numerous items in the budget which he said had not been discussed enough or at all. He noted wide changes in figures in the instructional supplies and equipment replacement categories, for instance.
Several administrators later said that many of the swings in figures reflect only a change in budget classifications. Replacement of classroom equipment no longer is lumped in one $11,558 category, Norman Mouck said, but instead separately appears in the academic departments receiving the money. Mouck, assistant superintendent of instruction, said the art department’s new listing of $125 for replaced equipment is an example. Boyer again pointed to printing expenses at the college.
Numerous, athletic programs, such as baseball and women’s basketball also are receiving budgets after spending no money last year. Mouck said the campus duplicating center has been able to print athletic brochures but they have a lower priority than the printing of classroom material, he said.
The duplicating center’s staff is adding no extra employees, Mouck said, so some of the smaller printing jobs will be printed in outside shops.
When Boyer completed his solitary stroll through the budget, Reiter said, “I was hoping that you wouldn’t really go through that. We’ve had month after month of rhetoric for public consumption,” Reiter said. “I think your grandstanding ... is unethical,” he told Boyer. “Most of the (spending) increases you voted for.”
Boyer agreed with Reiter’s last point but again said the college would have to learn to adjust to its income. If he were grandstanding, Boyer said, he would have been on the telephone for the two previous weeks and produced a large audience. No such attempt was made.