One campus grins, the other bears it

Kiley Russell

Wednesday, July 21, 1999 | 10:43 a.m.

Now that the dust has finally settled over the acrimonious budget battles of the 1999 Legislature, Southern Nevada college officials are sitting down to work out just how to spend their money.

And while finance officials at UNLV and the Community College of Southern Nevada are in the early stages of budget meetings with their deans and department heads, administrators say they do have a rough idea of how they are going to cope.

"I don't want to exude pessimism because we have a terribly good thing going here at UNLV. It's just going to be a period of tightened belts," Provost Doug Ferraro said of his university's nearly $291 million, two-year budget.

"We're not going to afford growth very well, certainly not in terms of new faculty. We're going to have to use more adjunct faculty, for example. We're going to have to look at the overall productivity of what we're currently doing," Ferraro said.

On the other hand, CCSN President Richard Moore calls his $138.9 million biennial budget "magnificent assistance."

So why the big difference between the two campuses?

"We received the largest percentage increase out of any institution in the state," said Moore, referring to CCSN's two-year, 30.4 percent budget increase.

However, UNLV's 21 percent increase could leave its administrators searching for savings in the classroom in order to shore up an underfunded student support budget, said Ferraro.

"We might have to hold fewer smaller classes than we currently do. We'll be taking a look at enrollment patterns in various courses, possibly eliminating sections with lower enrollments," he added.

Ferraro's fears appear to be well founded, says Tom Anderes, interm chancellor for the University and Community College System of Nevada. Anderes is taking over for departing Chancellor Richard Jarvis.

Jarvis had been losing the support of the regents in part because of the on-going funding inequities that favor Northern Nevada campuses over schools in the South.

Possible budget problems at UNLV may stem from the fact lawmakers funded 100 percent of requests for new faculty hires but failed to find money for librarians, janitors, admissions clerks and other support staff.

"So when you look at the concerns expressed in the legislature, there was a lot of talk about meeting growth in Southern Nevada," Anderes said. "But you can't also say 'We're going give you all the faculty to support more students but not going to provide for the growth in other areas."'

In fact, state lawmakers left the entire system feeding from a $867 million trough. That's up about 15 percent from the previous budget.

But the board of regents orginally requested a 50 percent overall increase.

"We've got a $54 million library coming on line in 2000," Ferraro said. "Such a facility requires a large number of personnel. We need additional staff to open and operate the library. The legislature allocated no money for support staff."

He added that some money for new hires will have to be diverted to shore up the support staff budget.

Out of its $50 million budget increase, UNLV will also have to shell out money for the opperation of its new law school and the planning stage of its proposed dental school.

"About $14 million of the $50 million increase is dedicated to those programs, so you really have a $36 million increase over the next couple of years," Anderes said. "That is supposed to get more faculty to support more students and provide support services for those students."

UNLV may find that difficult to do with the money available, he said.

But CCSN fared better in the past legislative session, said Jim Richardson, a lobbyist for the Nevada Faculty Alliance.

During the session, the community college was identified as the most underfunded in a regents' study on the state spending disparities that favor Northern Nevada campuses.

The study found a $24 million inequity that shortchanged UNLV by $7.6 million a year and CCSN by $15.2 million a year.

Lawmakers agreed to make up about one-quarter of the inequity over the two years of the 1999-2001 budget - about $5.9 million a year.

The help can't come too soon for the CCSN chief.

"We've grown from 16,000 students to over 30,000 in four years - that's phenomenal growth. We're the fastest growing college in America," Moore said.

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