{"id":20111,"date":"2020-10-26T13:24:16","date_gmt":"2020-10-26T20:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=20111"},"modified":"2020-11-02T13:49:40","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T21:49:40","slug":"camosun-says-4-5-million-deficit-best-case-scenario-for-2020-2021-fiscal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/10\/26\/camosun-says-4-5-million-deficit-best-case-scenario-for-2020-2021-fiscal\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun says $4.5 million deficit \u201cbest-case scenario\u201d for 2020-2021 fiscal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, Camosun College was at one point preparing for losses in its 2020-2021 fiscal year for between $10 million and $15 million, says Camosun chief financial officer Deborah Huelscher. While those numbers could still be a worst-case scenario, the college is also now looking at a best-case scenario of a $4.5-million deficit of the college\u2019s total revenue for 2020-2021, which, in the year\u2019s budget summary<\/a>, was $150,016,525.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is what we\u2019re projecting to end the year at,\u201d says Huelscher. \u201cIt could go up, it could go down. We\u2019re still actually working through the quarter-two results; obviously we don\u2019t have winter enrollment yet, so we\u2019ll have to re-visit the assumptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Camosun College is facing a deficit due to COVID-19 (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On June 30 of this year, the college announced they were at least temporarily closing the doors of Camosun\u2019s Continuing Education department, and announced other layoffs. Huelscher says that the college doesn\u2019t have any plans for additional layoffs at this time.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur belief is that we\u2019re incurring a deficit of that amount so that we can continue to provide the programing and services that our students expect and deserve,\u201d she says. \u201cWe did not want to start cutting to an extent that impacts our delivery right now, or impacts our ability to grow and recover in the future. The sector as a whole is in a deficit position, and that\u2019s just the reality, I guess, of our situation. It doesn\u2019t serve our students; it doesn\u2019t serve faculty and staff if we make cuts just to maintain a balanced position.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training supports the college being in a deficit position, says Huelscher, and the Camosun College Board of Governors understands and supports them as well. Executive salaries have been temporarily frozen as a cost-saving measure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a situation I certainly never imagined,\u201d says Huelscher. \u201cWe seem to be in a second surge globally, but for us, we\u2019re sort of working on a year [-to-year basis.] We\u2019ve done well with our fall enrollment; we hope we\u2019ll do the same for winter. We don\u2019t know beyond this first year, but our hope is that we\u2019ll be able to maintain this level of operation.\u201d (Most international students stayed in Victoria over the summer<\/a>, which helped international enrollment, although it still dipped.)<\/p>\n

There are lots of costs to running a campus, says Huelscher, that simply cannot be avoided even though the majority of students are off campus this semester.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have fixed costs tied to our buildings, and some of those costs continue,\u201d says Huelscher; \u201cnot a lot of savings there.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not easy to decide what goes when trying to cut costs, says Huelscher, considering about 80 percent of the college\u2019s costs are tied to salaries and benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, our people are very important to us, so, you know, that\u2019s the last place we want to look,\u201d says Huelscher. \u201cThe public service has frozen salaries for college execs, so no decreases, but there\u2019s no performance increases for the next cycle.\u201c<\/p>\n

But being able to reduce costs in areas such as travel\u2014which can be quite significant, says Huelscher\u2014is resulting in savings (it was the \u201clow-hanging fruit,\u201d she acknowledges). As an institution, she says, we\u2019ve done well in saving portions in areas where revenue has been lost, she says, such as parking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not getting the parking revenues that we would have in the past, and we\u2019re also saving on some of the cost,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

During times like these, Huelscher says executive teams come together and brainstorm ways to get through it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we did do, though, is we certainly put a hiring freeze in place; we look at every position we\u2019re going to fill\u2026 that\u2019s all we can do,\u201d she says. \u201cYou just keep looking. And you go with what has the least impact on students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, Camosun College was at one point preparing for losses in its 2020-2021 fiscal year for between $10 million and $15 million, says Camosun chief financial officer Deborah Huelscher. While those numbers could still be a worst-case scenario, the college is also now looking at a best-case scenario of a $4.5-million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20113,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20111\/revisions\/20113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}