Blue Mountain Community College has delivered layoff notices to 11 employees, and ultimately will eliminate 23 positions from the BMCC General Fund budget for 2020-2021.
The cuts will save the college nearly $694,000 in salary and payroll expenses next year.
The layoffs include three full-time classified, one full-time exempt-technical, and seven part-time employees. An additional three positions were set to be eliminated (one full-time classified and two fulltime exempt-technical), but the employees in those positions either accepted new positions or recently resigned. The 23 positions cut account for 12 vacant positions that have also been eliminated. The position reductions take effect June 30.
The position eliminations come as part of ongoing reductions to BMCC’s General Fund for 2020-2021 in an effort to close what could become a more than $4 million gap due to the impacts of COVID-19. In April, the college announced a $2.8 million budget shortfall, and the Board of Education approved a $2 per credit tuition increase for 2020-2021, with the intent to increase tuition at the same rate for the 2021- 2022 and 2022-2023 academic years. The budget gap at that time were due to a continued decline in enrollment, inadequate state funding, increasing PERS costs, and costs related to reporting required for unfunded state and federal mandates.
Since that time, however, college officials say the impacts of COVID-19 on BMCC have increased – spring term enrollment declined 27 percent, dual credit and early college credit took a hit when K-12 students were forced to stay home, and the state has indicated it may make a mid-biennium cut to the Community College Support Fund, which supports the BMCC General Fund. This mid-biennium cut is estimated to roll back 8.5 percent of the CCSF from all community colleges in the state – about $1.3 million for BMCC – all of which would need to be realized in the second year of the biennium (2020-2021). The state’s May Revenue Forecast reiterated that possibility.
Earlier this month, BMCC announced $1.76 million in reductions to the 2020-2021 General Fund through cuts to materials and services budgets (i.e., travel, supplies, professional services, equipment and dues), personnel savings that did not directly impact current employees, and other reductions such as a decrease in staff development funds. In addition, the college also announced at that time it would freeze four faculty instruction positions that were to be hired in 2020-2021 following retirements, as well as freeze the hiring of the vice president of student affairs position (the interim role in that position ends June 30).
BMCC President Dennis Bailey-Fougnier said the reductions are devastating, and all corners of the college will feel their impacts, though BMCC did its best to minimize the overall impact to students. However, additional cuts are still likely to fill the remaining budget gap.
“The decision to reduce these positions was not made lightly, and it’s heartbreaking to have to take this drastic step to help balance our budget,” Bailey-Fougnier said. “BMCC has been fiscally conservative for years, and prior to the pandemic, these reductions likely would have nearly closed our budget gap. However, we still have work to do depending on how deep our mid-biennium state cuts end up being.”
BMCC did receive a bit of good news late last week – the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) notified the college that it would allow BMCC employees to resume the Corrections Education program at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, Two Rivers Correctional Institution, and Powder River Correctional Facility on June 1. The employees had not been allowed into the facilities since mid-March due to COVID-19. This also means the nine employees that had been furloughed due to the temporary DOC contract suspension will be recalled back to work.
