De Anza College will not be doing business as usual during the next academic year. This and other issues related to the budget were discussed May 2 at the Foothill-De Anza Budget Town Hall Meeting.

De Anza President Brian Murphy opened the meeting,  speaking about the emotional toll that this budget issue has been on the whole college.

“We cannot just wish or hope that this problem will resolve itself,” Murphy said. “We need to constantly be telling Sacramento they cannot be oblivious to what they are causing.”

The Vice Chancellor of Business Services, Kevin McElroy spoke about the numbers, or rather, lack of numbers that De Anza has to base the budget on.

“All the numbers that we have,” McElroy said, “are the best estimates of the worst case scenario. We are given huge, broad numbers, and we are boiling them down.”

McElroy’s presentation was a PowerPoint that included some speculative budgets the school has planned for the next academic year. It contained much information, but the major point was that the district has a $30 million dollar deficit that needs to be made up, and most likely $10 million of it is coming from a workload reduction in part time faculty.

McElroy reveled during his presentation that this district has a surplus of an estimate between $14 million to $18 million called the Stability Fund. With it, and if we assume the $20 million deficit after the workload reduction, this fund will help keep the colleges running somewhat smoothly through spring quarter 2011/2012.

After McElroy’s presentation, Murphy spoke once more his thoughts on the budget.

“We keep hoping that the news is going to change about the budget,” he said, “How about we change the news?”

You can look at Kevin McElroy’s comprehensive power point on the budget at http://deanza.edu/budgetinfo.