The Northwest College Board of Trustees will take a few more days before deciding whether to lay off 10 employees — including six faculty members — and eliminate a vacant fitness coordinator position.

At their regular Monday meeting, trustees had been prepared to delay their vote until May, following the recommendation of NWC’s Finance Committee. However, rising criticism over the delays led the board to instead vote to hold a special meeting next week where they’ll make a final decision on the matter.

Facing a $2.6 million budget shortfall in the coming fiscal year, largely due to cuts in state support, the board in January voted for a number of reductions, but delayed a vote on recommended cuts to personnel. The goal of the delay was to give the board time to exhaust all alternatives, in the unlikely hope of increased support from the state coming out of the legislative session. 

Even if trustees made the same decision, it was argued in January, the board would make the cuts knowing they’d left no stone unturned in the search to avoid them. 

Uncertainty

Public comments at Monday’s meeting, as well as communications outside it, put pressure on the board to make a decision in consideration of the impacts the delays were having on those whose jobs were proposed for elimination. 

NWC mathematics instructor Michael Gundlach expressed appreciation that the board had gone to such great lengths to get public comments on the proposed cuts, but he said the uncertainty the delays created were “crippling.” 

Gundlach’s position is among the 10 currently filled positions that the proposed budget would eliminate.

“Ten people are having to make difficult professional and personal life decisions right now in this uncertainty,” he said. 

Gundlach also spoke of the difficulty the delay was creating professionally. 

The Education Department is conducting advising this week, and Math 1100 is among the classes not being offered in the fall due to the uncertainty of having an instructor to teach the class. As a required course, Gundlach explained, he wasn’t sure whether to tell the students to wait for a class that might not be available in the fall or take it at another institution, which would hurt enrollment. 

Under current proposed reductions in force, the entire department — the fourth-largest program at the college — would be covered by a single fixed-term instructor for 60 to 80 students, Gundlach said. 

“This uncertainty is having current, real consequences for our college,” he said. 

Gundlach argued the delays were inconsiderate to those who are waiting to find out if they’ll still have a job. He said that it’s understandable the board would wait for the possibility of increased state support coming out of the legislative session, but with the option of rehiring people in the case of a budget change, he urged the board to make a decision on Monday. 

“To be frank, as one of those 10 people, if my position was offered to me again, I’m not sure I’d want to take it,” he added. 

During the public forum, Board President Mark Wurzel read a letter from a community member, Patricia Lovell, who utilizes NWC’s day care center. Under the proposed cuts, four positions at the center would be eliminated, and the center would be closed. Lovell argued this would be “devastating.” 

“Quality childcare is limited, if not impossible to obtain, in Powell,” Lovell stated in her letter. 

While Lovell didn’t propose any alternatives to the needed cuts, she asked the board to “find it in your heart” to keep the center running. 

Kimberly Moore, who graduated from NWC’s nursing program in 2013, argued that Interim President Lisa Watson’s salary of $194,000 is “excessive” and hard to justify in light of the cuts being made. 

Paddling

Trustee Tara Kuipers said she felt in January, when they delayed making a decision on the cuts, that there was a desire in the community for the board not to make a hasty decision. She said she was surprised to hear the perception that the delay was needless.

While there had not been overt discussions at the past two monthly board meetings, Kuipers said there had been extensive dialogues and analysis outside those meetings among Watson and the Finance Committee, which was charged with analyzing how to address the budget shortfall. 

She compared it to ducks swimming, where on the surface things are still but there is “paddling like hell under the surface.” 

“The delay … has been absolutely critical to ask a lot of questions,” Kuipers argued, and she said the board had built a better understanding of the situation in the past few months. 

“I feel like the stones have been turned and turned and turned since January,” Kuipers said. 

Watson was likewise surprised at the sense the board, with the long delay, was being inconsiderate to those personnel who were threatened with job loss.

“It hurts my heart to hear some of the comments we’ve heard tonight,” she said. 

Watson explained that with falling enrollment, the college just doesn’t have the need for those faculty positions for the time being, describing the layoffs as undesirable but unavoidable. 

“Do I want to save every person in this? Absolutely I do,” Watson said, but she didn’t see the college’s financial situation improving anytime soon. 

In the interest of making a decision soon, the NWC board opted to make a final decision at a special meeting on Monday, April 19, at 4 p.m.