Echo Times

Issue date: 3/15/10 Section: News

Media Credit: Nick Madden Sufficiently supported? Students in COM's adaptive PE yoga class recieve help from assistant instructors. The program is one of several in the disabled student services department that has seen cuts.

A revised budget issued last month by College of Marin revealed the institution now faces an $802,000 shortfall, due largely to falling property tax and state revenues that fund the school. The development is particularly troubling for students like Mary Ruiz, who uses a mobility scooter because of multiple sclerosis.
Her adaptive PE classes have already been scaled back and some are concerned they may shrink further.
"There's no place else you can go for this kind of program," Ruiz said. "The cuts have been devastating."
They have also been necessary, according to college officials, who say rising enrollment and higher tuition fees could not offset COM's losses or the spending increases that exacerbated them.
"We had a combination of revenues being less and expenditures being higher than anticipated," said Vice President of Operations Al Harrison. "We knew we were going to have reductions, but when the state adopted its budget they turned out to be more than expected."
COM has dipped into its cash reserves to curb the shortfall's effects, he said, but board of trustee policy states reserve-levels must stay above 7.6 percent, so cuts were still necessary. These have mostly affected categorical programs, none of which faced deeper slashes than disabled student services, according to DSPS coordinator Chris Schultz. Historically guaranteed 95 percent of the past year's budget from the state, Schultz recently learned COM's program could see its budget drop 46 percent because of the state's economic woes.
"It was a devastating kind of number," he said. Instead of $1.34 million, California allotted $843,000 to the school's DSPS. An allocation of federal stimulus money helped, and Schultz said contributions from COM's general fund averted disaster for this year. However, the program, which Harrison said was $300,000 over budget, had to shrink and is not free of future financial problems.

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