At the Sept. 9 board meeting, Delta’s 2025-26 budget was approved following a barrage of questions from board members and public commenters alike.
The $154,477,667 budget includes various transfers, such as $1 million set aside from capital funds towards campus beautification and a nearly $2,050,000 decrease to facilities maintenance.
Questions over the budget started during public comment, where Harry Mersmann, a Delta professor of sociology and member of the Planning and Budget Committee, asked about potential violations of shared governance processes.
Mersmann provided printouts of the budgets that had been approved at planning and budget on Aug. 25 and what was shown at the Presidents Council on Sept. 4.
“In pink you will notice all of the changes,” Mersmann said as he went through the pages. “The items that were changed from what was approved at [the Planning and Budget Committee meeting].”
The highlighted changes had been suggested by Mersmann but were never voted on, instead being added to the budget before the President’s Council meeting.
“He [Vice President of Administrative Services Augustine Chavez] took some of my comments and made those modifications, but the problem is there was no motion at Planning and Budget to move those forwards,” said Mersmann.
For these changes to be approved by Planning and Budget, it would have had to have been sent back from President’s Council — delaying the entire process. A vote to do just that did not succeed, according to Chavez.
“There was a vote to send it back to the Planning and Budget Committee,” said Chavez about the Sept. 4 President’s Council meeting. “That vote did not pass.”
Following the vote to send the budget back to the President’s Council there was a successful vote to move it forward to the Board of Trustees.
“I will leave it up to you, whether we believe that is shared governance,” Chavez told the board before moving on to further questions.
As the meeting left public comment, questions of the actual content of the budget became the focus of many of the board members.
Concerns were raised about the amount placed into facilities maintenance which marked a decrease of more than $2 million from the previous budget.
“$2,800,000 going all the way down to $750,000,” said Trustee Armando Valerio, noting that the campus was in a great deal of need. “What is that gonna accomplish, cutting the grass and painting? Is that enough?”
“I think that’s what’s available,” said Chavez, citing inflation and budget priority as the principal causes for the lack of funding towards maintenance. “I’ll be honest, $750,000 doesn’t fund quite a lot … inflation is a real factor.”
If, during the year, the need arises for repairs it would have to be put in front of the board once more, potentially delaying repairs.
“The budget approved last week does reflect a need to tighten our belts due to the state budget deficit and the transition away from COVID-era funding protections,” said Alex Breitler, Director of Marketing and Communications, who responded to questions directed to Chavez. “That said, we recognize that $750,000 will likely not fund a large number of projects, given inflation. It is possible that, as needs arise during the year, we may return to the Board with requests to prioritize certain maintenance projects.”
While answering questions from the board about facilities maintenance and the methodology around the budget, Chavez noted that IT was an outlier in terms of its funding source, with its budget coming from capital projects funds.
“We fund our ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and our core systems, students information systems, and our HR systems, we fund those first, and we fund them through the capital projects budget,” said Chavez, which prompted further questions from the Board of Trustees.
“I believe that I heard Mr. Chavez say that IT operations is funded through capital projects. Did I hear that correctly?,” asked trustee Charles Jennings. “Because my understanding is that capital projects are one-time expense kind of things.”
The 2024-25 Adopted Budget defines the capital projects fund as being used for “the acquisition or construction of significant capital outlay items, and Scheduled Maintenance and Special Repairs (SMSR) projects.” It also notes that money in the fund “shall be used only for capital outlay purposes.”
The California Department of General Services’ website defines capital outlay expenditures as “for the acquisition of land or other real property, construction, improvements, design, and equipment necessary in connection with a construction or improvement project.”
“Kind of, IT licensing is done through capital projects funds” said Chavez. “That’s been the historical way we’ve funded it for many years.”
Following this comment from Chavez, Jennings suggested to Board President Janet Rivera that the board should review the budget preparation process.
“I would like to suggest that the Board President urge the Board Committee on Finance and Fiscal Oversight to begin a process to review and discuss the whole budget preparation process as it goes from adoption to how it’s utilized and implemented, and then how it rolls into the new budget process for next fiscal year,” said Jennings.
A Collegian review of board agendas indicates the Capital Projects fund being used for IT contracts as far back as November of 2019 during the implementation of the time and attendance management system. Prior to this, the contracts cited “one-time funds” as the source.
“This has long been the practice at Delta College. We’re looking into the historical reason for this and will share more information with the Board as requested,“ said Breitler.
