(0:07 - 9:39)
Okay, we will call the budget workshop to order. We do have a quorum and the first thing on the agenda is public comment. Do we have anyone signed up? No one is signed up to speak, Mr. Chairman. 

Very good. Okay, moving right into budget development workshop. If she's not here, it's gonna be a real short meeting. 

Thank you, Chairman. No, it's kind of weird looking at the panel now. So tonight I just wanted to visit with you guys and talk about some very high-level aspects of the budget development, kind of talk about the timeline for the budget, define the goals that we identified in establishing our budget, share with you some of our basic assumptions and projections that we've made, and most importantly is to discuss our tax exemptions for our residents that are 65 and over and or disabled. 

This was something that y'all as a board had asked about last year, but we kind of missed the deadline on doing anything so that is one of the main purposes of this meeting tonight. So basically our goal on this was to adopt a balanced budget that would allow the college to serve our students and meet the goals that were set forth in Vision 2028, the Lee College Strategic Plan. Some of the assumptions that we made are tuition and fees. 

Right now we are projecting those to be flat with the actual results of 2023. Our state appropriations, at this point we still have them as flat compared to last year or the current year that we're in. House Bill 8 has been passed out of both houses and is sitting on the governor's desk for signatures. 

We don't know amounts yet. We have been told that the payment schedule is going to be different than what it has been in the past. In the past we've received ten payments throughout the year. 

Now we will be, or this next year we will be receiving three payments. Fifty percent of the state appropriations will be received in October and then 25% in February and another 25% in June. You know as I said we don't have amounts yet and even when we get amounts they've already told us that there are going to be adjustments that are made as we go throughout this first year. 

Part of the reason for those adjustments is the one of the items that they're basing our allocation on is on data that we have not routinely provided to the state. So we're trying to back up, give them someplace to start, then as we start reporting routinely they will take that data and compare it to what we had and see if there's adjustments that need to be made. But they have already told us you should anticipate that there will be adjustments. 

So the final number which is you know the big part of our operating budget is of course our tax revenue and we will have another budget workshop in June where this will be the main topic of discussion. We should have some some pretty good estimates on our valuations by that time and so we will be coming back in June to have that discussion with you guys and then finalize the tax rate in July once we have certified numbers. Our budget process, we sent out budget requests to all the department heads and we asked that they return their budget requests to the controller by May 31st so that's next week. 

Once we receive those budgets back then we schedule a meeting and myself and the controller and our internal auditor we sat down with the budget manager and their supervisor and we go through their budget basically line by line by line and talk about is there any change, what the change is and what the request entails. If there are new requests that someone is making either they could have, they're proposing a new position or maybe they're proposing new software that they need or maybe they're proposing some large piece of equipment. All of those new items will be tracked individually and we will accumulate those for the college as a whole. 

Once the new items are defined then we as a cabinet along with Dr. V will sit down and we'll go through those and again depending upon the amounts and that sort of thing if we have to make any cuts or any changes we will do that as a group but only after we have all the requests so that we can evaluate all the requests against each other and try to make the best decision we can for the college. Once the cabinet has gone through that process then we would present those changes to Dr. V for her review and approval as well and then those additions would be included in our proposed budget that will ultimately come to the board for your review and approval. So with all that being said right now when we're looking at revenue we're projecting about a million dollars and this is our current budget is 14 million and our proposed budget for next year will be about 15 million so about a million dollars more in tuition and fees and we will also be projecting about a million dollars more in interest income. 

Annette does that tuition and fee number tie into that tab that you sent us earlier that tuition and fee tab? I think the amount that I sent you before was net of discounts so it would have been tuition and fees minus all the discounts because I pulled it off of the off of the audit report and so that is the number that is on the audit report is net of all discounts. So wouldn't we want to look at that number here what's the difference as far as the way you're talking to us here? When you're looking at when you're looking at discounts that that's a lot of the grants like the federal grants which we don't we don't include in our budget because that's outside funding source and and so I mean the difference is this number is going to be before we apply any exemptions waivers anything like that or any other scholarship or discounts and the number that was provided to you on the spreadsheet came straight from the audit report which is net of all of those amounts. So when we present the budget to you you will see exemptions and waivers as separate line items as part of tuition and fees.

(9:39 - 22:07)
This is just the the high-level gross amount. It was like eight or nine million I believe. Yes sir. 

Real quickly I know that we don't know what those numbers are going to look like from the state appropriation because this is new funding. When they did the data runs how did we fare at that time when we submitted that? We fared very well Dr. Peete. Yes we fared very well within the state. 

We were we had the fourth highest percentage increase after the data run was applied from the bill and so that isn't a total amount but it is the it was the fourth largest increase in the state out of the 50 college districts. What were those numbers looking like? So for the biennium it was about 14 million higher so each year we were looking at 7 million. That also and it didn't include an additional million in TEOG funding which doesn't materially affect our budget nor does it nor does information that we received around the FAST scholarships which were the dual credit funds and that for us was around $560,000 and again doesn't materially affect our budget because it's just a pass-through. 

So the important thing though was as Annette said is that we don't know where we'll stand when it's all said and done still but the initial data runs you know again had us very favorably. Our increase was I believe 81.4 percent over the last biennium if we did not use House Bill 8 and that ranged the number Annette do you remember the the lowest number? I kept looking at Brazosport College before and theirs was in the 30% range increase but I believe that the increase the smallest increase went down to just a few percent. I mean so it ranged from just a few percent all the way to there were only and the highest was only 80 something percent so we were literally only three colleges were higher than us at that time and that was based upon our performance metrics and our demographics. 

So the cabinet got together and we went through our strategic plan and looked at all the deadlines that we have all the thresholds we need to meet in this next fiscal year and what we tried to define here are the dollars that are associated with us being able to meet those goals and as you can see those estimated totals is about 643,000 that we would need to add to our current budget in order to meet the goals that we have set in the strategic plan and put a little bit of detail here you can see it does involve hiring new people, finalizing the instructional master plan and then also creating a facility strategic plan. Are these that 643,000 is that for just this biennium or just this next year? This next budget year only. So of course any of the positions would carry over to future years but like the signage these bottom four things which are 310,000 those would be one-time expenses those would not be expenses that we would carry over to future years as well as the kiosks and the kiosks yes sorry thank you so that's 322 million I mean thousand. 

So the other thing we took a look at is what are other needs that we know that we have on campus that we would want to be able to fund in this next budget period. The first one is salary compression so you may recall a couple years ago at the recommendation of Gallagher we adjusted our salary scales at that time we didn't have enough money in our budget that would have allowed us to put employees on that scale based on their years of experience and so what happened is when we raised everybody up to the minimum based on their band or their grade people who had been at the college for a period of time were making the same amount or or only slightly more than new people coming in the door. We knew that was the situation so we had always planned to address it when the funding was available. 

The other thing is we want to be able to project a salary increase for faculty and staff right now we we have it estimated at around six percent. We will want to increase the mileage reimbursement right now it's at 60 cents the approved IRS rate is 65.5 and so we're estimating that that would cost about $25,000. Again we want to offer the first time free at Lee. 

The numbers based on this year is about 1.2 million dollars so this year and in the prior years we use the cares money to fund that benefit for our students and this would be the first year that we will be funding that institutionally. Our automobile fleet needs some help and so I've just put an estimate in here about a hundred and twenty-five thousand it may not be that much. You know going through our leasing program it's been difficult to get automobiles. 

The van that we got for Huntsville it took us three three times of finding a van to actually be able to procure it because they were just going so fast. Well it's going to be two probably midsize type automobiles and then maybe one other van. That to purchase or to lease? We will probably look at purchasing these rather than leasing them and we'll probably issue our own. 

I'm sorry. I think your numbers too low. Well I've visited with a local dealer and I said you know this is what I'm looking for and so I mean. 

Mid-size cars on a van? Mm-hmm. Okay. We don't buy through the state anymore? Well you can and that's what we have done in the past and that's what Enterprise does for us. 

The problem is that they have had such cutbacks in production that you may get it you may not get it. For instance we had wanted to get two vehicles two trucks this year. We weren't able to do that. 

We were only able to get one because they just cut it back and cut it back and so what I'm going to be proposing is that we create our own RFP and just go out for bid and see what kind of pricing we can get. Is that because we're going through Enterprise? Because we used to not use Enterprise. We would have an avenue to go straight to the book or wherever and buy them through the state. 

The manufacturers are limiting allocation for special pricing and so that's what has created the shortage. The other thing or a couple more things that we have on this list is we would like to upgrade our performances that we produce at the PAC Center and try to get a little bit better quality of some of the acts that we have over there and in order to do that we are going to have to invest a little bit of money and put into that into that process and so that's about a hundred and fifty thousand and then the other thing that we've been talking about all year long is improving the safety on our campus and so we're looking at improving the signage. We're wanting to put covers on the glass. 

There's a there's a film that you can put on on all the glass and we have a lot of glass on this campus so that if a door is locked and that person, God forbid, were to try to shoot through the glass to get in the door, this film it won't prohibit them from coming in completely but it will delay and deter them from having access to the building. So we're looking at at adding that to our campus to help improve the safety. So the total of those amounts is about four point three million dollars. 

So all total it's almost five million dollars of expenses that we've recognized that we would like to put into our budget for this next year. Annette, have we put money out for PAC performances before like this or just the first time? This would be the first time since I've been here. I thought so.

(22:07 - 24:38)
Do you have some sort of a list that did they provide to know what they're looking at what what they're trying to do here and how many that is or that could easily be one one big one or it could be you know. Yes so right now what they're what they are doing is they are looking at that Mr. Hemsel and they're also looking at creating a package deal so someone could come and they can buy like a season pass to attend performances at the PAC and so when we come back in June and July with a very detailed discussion of some of these increased expenses I'll make sure that we provide that to you. This is just a look at you know I think I told you all last time we have two vehicles that we're looking to retire. 

It's basically this Ford Explorer and the Equinox. So when we were talking about the salary compression this is the breakdown of how that falls out. The E level would be executive level and you can see there's no adjustment to that level of salaries. 

The D's would be directors. These would be classified and the A's and B's which are your security, your maintenance, your custodial group. That is the group of students who will be really impacted by these adjustments. 

Looking at the history of salary increases that we have done you know it's been based on what we could afford at the time you know so there were several years 2010, 2011, 19, 21 where we didn't give any increase at all. We've given standard increase has been around the 3% mark and last year we gave a 5% increase and as I said right now we're just proposing a 6% for this year. You're going to provide us CPIs and comparisons to other districts and all that right? Yes sir.

(24:41 - 30:34)
So looking at our bonds so everyone's aware that we did the refunding right and we sold our new bonds on May the 9th so that's that's the good news. We were able to sell all of our bonds and so looking at this table right here the overall savings on that transaction is going to be about six million dollars. Our debt payments for the first three years 24, 25, and 26 are basically the same as what they were before the refunding. 

Starting in the year 27, 2027 you can see that we're saving about a half million dollars a year in our debt payments. So we're at almost five million for 24, 25, 26. We dropped down to about four and a half million in 27 and then starting in 28 on we're at about 3.8, 3.9 million in our annual debt service payments. 

Our tax rate history. So none of this is news to you guys we cover it every year but in 2012 our rate was 25 cents, 25.2. In 2015 we jumped up to 2607 and then it's been pretty constant kind of going down down a little a little blip up here but mainly going down to 2201 currently. So if you look at the 2201 compared to 2012 we've decreased it about 13 percent. 

If you look at where we are now compared to our high point of 2015 we have reduced it by 16 percent. If you look at it compared to 2019 we're down about 12 percent and if you just look at the change from last year to to the current year we reduced it by four percent. Could you on that same chart right there put in the the amount of money that we've received and the percentage it's increased you know to show the the value what we've. 

Yes sir I can. This is a a chart showing the value changes that have happened so we went back to 2012 so we were at eight million in 2012. 2015 we were at nine not million but billion sorry 9.5 billion. 

19 we were about 14 billion and right now we're sitting at about 18 billion. So that is the change in the valuation. When we look at how that breaks down between residential industrial or other property types it's pretty it's pretty much been an increase in residential property as well as industrial. 

A little bit of a of a jump in commercial as well but you can see residential has been you know roughly 20 percent and now it's at about 23 and industrial has always been in excess of 50 but it used to be up closer to 61 percent of the total valuation. So there's been a little bit of a swing there. Now for the fun part. 

So looking at our 65 and over exemptions right now here we are right here at fifty thousand dollars. So whatever the value of your home is you take the homestead exemption off of that then you take 50,000 off of that and now that becomes the value your taxable value. Looking at it right now on a home that's valued at 245,000 dollars for lee college district over 65 at 50,000 plus a 20 percent homestead exemption your tax is going to be about 321 dollars and if you calculate that as a rate it ends up being about 13 cents because of those exemptions that are allowed.

(30:38 - 31:48)
If we were to increase that over 65 exemption to 120,000 dollars now that same home valued at 245,000 the tax is now 167 dollars and 28 cents and our calculated rate ends up being 6.8. You take that and compare it to these other gulf coast schools that puts us at the second lowest calculated rate. The only one that would be lower than us would be houston community college. So even like san jack whose over 65 exemption is 127 we would be at 120 but their homestead exemption is only one percent.

(31:52 - 32:29)
Same thing with lone star their homestead exemption is only one percent. Their disabled is at 75 or 75,000 sorry and so their rate is a little over seven percent. So when we want to compare our tax rate to some of these other colleges when you take into account the exemptions the story is a little bit different than if you just look at the rate at face value.

(32:34 - 34:47)
When you look at 120 versus some of these other entities that are going to be on a tax bill right now the city of baytown is at 80,000 but I do believe that they are looking at increasing that based on conversations that I've had. I don't know that that's been finalized but I would expect that it would go up to somewhere around a hundred thousand. Goose creek I'm not real sure what's going on there but harris county had been 250 and they just recently signed a deal and they're going to increase theirs to 275,000. 

Right getting old. When you look at the the same house the the lee college portion of that residence bill is roughly 11 percent over half of their tax bill is related to ISD. About 30 percent of their tax bill is related to the city taxes and lee college is roughly about 11 percent of their total tax bill. 

So you can see our our levy is very small portion of a residence total bill. So let's see how this plays out. We have a house and the homeowner turned 65 in the year 2020 and at that time the house was valued at 175,000.

(34:49 - 35:17)
So we're going to give them a 20 percent homestead exemption so that's 35,000. They turned 65 during that year so they're going to get the over 65 exemption of 50,000 because that's what was in place at the time that they turned 65. So their total taxable value is 90,000.

(35:19 - 36:02)
During the year that they turned 65 the tax rate for lee college was 23 cents 2301. So the taxes that would have been assessed and collected for that property is 207 dollars and nine cents. That becomes the ceiling for that taxpayer meaning their taxes they will never pay lee college more than 207 dollars and nine cents on that property as long as they live there.

(36:05 - 36:26)
So we come along and now we're in 2023. Let's just assume the home has increased in value by 240 up to 245,000 now. So now they're going to get the 20 percent homestead exemption.

(36:27 - 36:46)
They're going to get the over 65 exemption of 120 dollars instead of the 50,000. So the total taxable value is 76,000. The tax rate in 2023 is 2201.

(36:48 - 37:37)
So when you apply that tax rate against the value the tax is 167.28. So it is below the ceiling that was set back in 2020. So the homeowner would pay the lower amount the 167.28 rather than the 207. Now if that calculation for 2023 had come out to be some amount that was higher maybe a calculation said that the homeowner should pay 300 dollars in taxes for whatever reason.

(37:38 - 41:02)
No the tax owner the taxpayer would pay the 207.09. So they're always going to pay the lower of the calculation or the ceiling that was calculated in the first year that they claimed the 65 and over exemption. So in this case the homeowner would save 39 dollars and 81 cents from from us increasing the exemption from 50,000 to 120,000. Harris County their exemptions like I said it went from 250 up to 275 but they're under that amount so they don't pay any tax to the county and Goose Creek and City of Baytown don't know what they would do on that. 

So that would be the that would be the result of raising that increase. If we said no we're happy with where the exemption is we don't want to change that we just want to lower our tax rate by another penny. If we were to do that the calculation would not net this same homeowner any savings because the calculation would still be above the 207.09. So by raising that exemption we're able to give that tax or that homeowner a 39 savings. 

If we lower the tax rate it doesn't do anything for them in this year. If we look at just the trend of our over 65 and or disabled exemptions you can see it's been fairly steady it's increased about 400 households since 2018. So we haven't had a huge increase in the number of households. 

If we look at our total number compared residents with a homestead are about 64 percent of our taxable residents. Residents that do not have a homestead which would be kind of rental properties for the most part are about 13 percent and then residents with a homestead and over 65 or disabled is about 23 percent of the total residents in our in our area. And so what does this cost us to do? It's going to be very minimal to our overall tax collection.

(41:03 - 1:07:22)
It's going to be less than a hundred thousand for sure and we feel like this is going to be a good move because it will help the older population and some of the some of the residents that we are striving to help with the tax burden. And so that is going to be our recommendation to you when we go into our regular board meeting is that you consider increasing the over 65 and disabled exemption from 50 to 120. Is there a reason we're doing that tonight and or we're not deciding the tax rate tonight we're just deciding that right? Yes we're only discussing the exemption. 

The reason that we are bringing it to you tonight rather than waiting is so that we can if it is approved we can get that information out to the taxing entities so that when we receive our certified values in July this increase will be taken into consideration on those values and so we it will help us get a better estimate on our tax revenue for this next fiscal year. Are we in the meeting right now to we will we will adjourn out of this is still the workshop it's still the workshop I guess. Are you finished I mean I'm finished unless y'all have any questions for me. 

You had a slide or a tab for it for the tuition I believe earlier. I did on our revenue. Yeah that that's what we looked at earlier. 

Yeah I don't think that's the one we had but anyway I guess my question has to do with with enrollment and you sent us a spreadsheet on on that. Is there any way that you can help or me at least to understand we can do this offline if you want. How we generate our revenue based on a what you called a regular student versus a Huntsville versus a dual credit versus an impact. 

I mean do we do we net the same money on on all of those or how does that work? No they pay they pay different different rates Huntsville and dual credit pay a rate that is different from our normal student here. Obviously our in-district rate is going to be different than an out-of-district student so we have different rates there. When you look at the breakdown of our tuition and fees in our budget you will see different lines for all of these categories of tuition and fees and so we take those rates into consideration when we are projecting that out. 

I just combined it here because again this is trying to stay high level and we can certainly get into that discussion later in June when we come back you know if you would like. So is it safe to say that a regular student we quote make more money off of them than we would a dual credit for instance or a high school? Their tuition and fees is higher. Higher right? Yes sir. 

Okay so I get and then Liberty is that mostly dual credit and impact or do we have regular students in Liberty? We have regular students as well. We do have dual credit there as well. We have both. 

Okay so I guess my concern and here's where I want to drill down in spring of 16 like eight years ago in regular we had 4,600 roughly students. Today we have 3,600 so we're down 20 20 some percent in the last eight years on our regular students who pay us the most money. How do we forecast that or how do we figure out if this trend continues where we're going to be and you don't have to answer this we can go later but what happens if we were to lose say Huntsville or the dual credit or impact or some of that stuff from the high schools if they went a different route how would we be able to you know sustain ourself and with with this much drop in in enrollment which is it's roughly a thousand in for the spring since 2016 how do we how do we explain that or how do we understand what happened and where we're going from there if this continues how can we sustain ourself? When we look at when we look at our enrollment data every every day basically during the registration period we're looking at main campus which are our full tuition paying students we look at dual credit we look at Huntsville we look at all those different categories of students and project out and I can tell you right now for the fall term we're up about 12 percent in enrollment and so you know obviously if we lose any one of our revenue streams be it if we were to lose all of our dual credit or if we were to lose Huntsville or if we were to even lose one of our centers yeah it's going to hurt we're going to have to take a step back we're going to have to reevaluate and see how we do sustain and make adjustments as needed if needed but enrollment is I can tell you we monitor enrollment very closely pretty much on a daily basis during the registration period and the minute we see a decline or a concern then it's all hands on deck and we're looking at it and we're trying to evaluate what we need to do to to make sure and I don't doubt that one bit I guess my concern is during budget time is when we need to look at this historical data and determine do we need to keep adding staff do we keep spending money I mean you said we're going to increase roughly 12 percent I mean we were 4,300 in fall last year so that would mean another 50 or 60 so that would still put us well below what we were at several years ago with regular enrollment but we have to look at our enrollment as a whole because when we have staff that's serving our students they don't just service one little piece for the most part we do have some staff that would be specialized for dual credit such as our shared advisors or that sort of thing but in for for the college as a whole we serve all of our students and so even though this bucket may be down a little bit when when we're looking at everything we we are up and as a matter of fact you know Dr. B has reported numerous times that we had the highest level in the history of the college in the fall of this year and so so we we are moving forward and we feel that we have programs in place and we are continuing to execute those to have your phone's ringing that's my phone yes it is you calling her to get her off one of you guys whoever it is thank you well I bet it's Gary I hope he's hungry he'll be all right I'd like to see us drill down to understand the enrollment and where the money's coming from I mean net net we're making nine million dollars on tuition and fees I mean that's not very much money I mean we could almost tighten up and cut back and we had five million extra this year we could almost give free enrollment to everybody you know if we really well we had five million extra this year right well let's just not get carried away because part of that was planned I'm just saying we're not bringing in that much tuition money net from what we're we're taking in from the from the taxpayers who are paying for you know 90% of it I think that I think to complete your analogy though from eight from 2008 is that the number you started with 16 16 to now you'd have to look at the tuition and fees cost from 2016 to now as well you know it's gone up I'm sure and so that that would complete the analysis you can't just look at the numbers of students without looking at the dollars generated by those numbers yeah so we may have fewer students today generating more money right I'm just concerned that you know forecasting if if this continues we could be in trouble here in the next three or four years as far as the regular students that we yeah we cater to and I don't remember looking at the at the data from 16 each year if it's gone down and come back up or what but well no it's gone it's pretty much gone down every every year it bumped up just a little bit in in 22 then it you know well just a little bit in 22 yeah so I think another important variable to consider would be looking at the changes in tuition as as Regent Santana just pointed out so for example Huntsville Center's tuition is now par to main campus so you can count that as a regular student and their enrollment for example during the last semester increased 40 percent so there's an extra 400 students right there that are full-paying students and so it would not be you know it's an apples to oranges comparison to compare 2016 to 2023 and the other part of the Huntsville equation is in the past we were somewhat capped on what we could bring in on Huntsville because of the contract amount and now with the second chance pale and I believe that last number I heard quoted on that is like close to 90 percent of our incarcerated students can qualify for pale over 90 over 90 percent then that basically removes that cap and so that's one reason also that we've seen increases in in the Huntsville numbers are you going to bring us anything recommendations on tuition increases or anything this year we will we'll continue to look at that but right now I'm not anticipating requesting an increase we are still right like number seven out of nine when it comes to tuition rates and so I'm not anticipating that we would be asking for an increase in tuition and fees are we in any jeopardy at all with dual credit or impact or stewart losing any of those there's no discussion about us losing those right not that I'm aware of no sir our dual credit numbers have actually greatly increased oh yeah but so so have our regular enrollment students but both of those and and I don't know if you recall but I believe I reported that what the nation you know what we're seeing with our colleagues is that they're making up some of their enrollments from dual credit increases which generally do not provide the same amount of revenue with few exceptions and that's not the case for us we are seeing both increases in dual credit enrollment and regular student enrollments this particular spreadsheet shows a projected actual value of a million dollars more that which shows the actual there I mean it's a million dollars which one you looking at the top projecting a million dollars more revenue than we did last year it seems like it's growing somewhere well the other sheet that you you didn't you don't have here I don't know if that showed us an increase after all the discounts or not but I don't remember what it had I didn't print it I don't remember off the top of my head I'm sorry it was it was the word discount right that you used yes sir yes sir exemptions and waivers and scholarships that apply against the tuition I think you said that the net we make on tuition is like nine nine million a year yeah roughly but we make money on the scholarships as well right I mean that's money to the college well depends it could be money to the college it could be money that we pay back to the student depending upon how their how their bill is paid so the scholarship could go toward paying their their tuition and fees or if their tuition and fees are already paid and depending upon the restrictions of the scholarship those funds could be refunded back to the student yeah but then there wouldn't be a discount to the tuition and fees to begin with right that's correct so we get the full tuition and fees yes yeah that's where I don't see where a scholarship would cost this money as a discount for anything it's mainly it's it's just the way we have to report it on the financial statements yeah I get it it's just but it's money to the college but if you have to give to the students because you got all the tuition and fees that the scholarship intended to pay anyway so right yeah we don't lose anything there I also think it's very important to remember that our complete funding model is changing with yeah I would say with about 95 percent certainty is going to change radically in September and so we will still have tuition and fees coming in and as Annette has shown us we are basing our change on the million dollars ahead that we are because of enrollment increases I don't believe this time you can forecast any changes on the state appropriation dollars like you said once that those numbers are known then we can always look and make adjustments to wherever we need to but right I mean I think I think at this level like you said high level we're looking at the numbers we've always looked at every year at this at this stage of the budget right these are the big big revenue groups you're forecasting what the actuals might be based on all your wizardry and all that kind of stuff so yeah I mean I think that's where we start every year and then we start drilling down into the details of each of these categories I just think it's important to to look at the historical data and try to forecast where we might be you know five or ten years from now unless something drastically changes you know I remember when we looked at that big you know 10 year spreadsheet I was thinking and you know six years ago we'd be broke today if we looked at that forecast it's about as good as the data you have at the time you look at it well unless you broke today unless you look at it and you and you make a change which is probably what we did yeah we have and that's what I'm saying I mean that's that's the reason for that but if you just look at five six years out based on that it's doom and gloom but it's never been doom and gloom yeah I think adjustments are being made and even through the COVID years we did well and so yeah and I think that's what they say they're looking at this stuff all the time that's what they do every day that's their job and that's a big key and you know the reality is Regent Hensel one of the things that you're correctly pointing out is and I'm not sure if you're referencing this as well but we look at this in terms of actual birth rates in the nation and what we are seeing is that there is a decrease that the nation is experiencing with regard to birth rate so we we take that into account we take into account the population growth in Texas over the years in our region and so we we look at all of these different factors but we are certainly looking historically at our own data and we're disaggregating that data by the type of student that we are serving and we're also now looking at how this compares to the new funding model which will radically change the way we are receiving funds. 

So our our next workshop is June 29th correct? Yes sir. So is it safe to assume we'll have more clarity on the state appropriations line by then assuming the governor the governor signs everything is anticipated I mean. I'm sorry what was your question? At the next meeting we should have a little more but we won't have perfect clarity I don't but we should have a little more clarity on the state appropriations in a month. 

I think I I would not be I think it might be too soon okay we might get another data run but the other variable that we might want to also think about is it is our intention to have a branch campus in Montbellevue and I would anticipate that in the next few years our enrollment will increase as a result of that as well. So there's a number of variables that we have to take into account. Can I make a just comment thought crossed my head as we grow the dual credit student numbers doesn't that potentially decrease our potential full-time students? If students are getting what they need from lee college in high school there there's not much they can do we can do for them by the time they get out of high school here. 

In theory yes. So we could be you know could be sort of growing trading one for the other yeah but but we're trading the higher paying tuition fee students that would come here for for lower credit right and that could be part of that growth and dual credit declining our regular students here because we're cultivating them in high school and they're they're either moving on or completing so it'd be it'd be well I'm I'm thinking that we can actually calculate the percentage of students who have dual credit and I bet you Dr. Walters could as he's listening even right now could give us a figure on the percent of those students who actually matriculate to lee college after dual credit because not all of them you know complete you know even their core curriculum some of them take just a little bit and still plan on coming to lee college but there's also one other important variable and that is again with the new funding model the fast program will allow students to receive dual credit for free for all students who are on free and reduced lunch and they're using a very generous calculation for that which we have looked at and for us in goose creek that would be about 80 of the students who would be eligible to take dual credit so that's a completely different population of students who might take some you know classes with us and then continue on and matriculate to full-time students at lee so we're looking at it from all all different angles so I mean an 80 percent is a hugely increased number than the number that we have now if it was a if tuition was a barrier to our free and reduced lunch students then no it's not it's no it's not well it may be some most of the barrier and just for my clarification um this the first data run that it looked favorable for the college by about seven million that's is that seven million more than we were allocated lat for the last year like an additional so we're not confident that that's going to bear out not yet um yeah um and so but would it be unrealistic to think that maybe we could at least I don't say count on it because you can't count on anything but maybe half you know would would they would the first data run be so high and then the last data run be you're just going to get a million more I mean is there I mean is there any feeling or again this is such a new funding model it who knows what it could be maybe it'll come back and we'll get more I we we just don't know and even once we have a number they've already told us there will be mid there will be mid-term adjustments and so you know the um the information I got on the new on the new funding model that said okay you're going to get your money in three uh three payments rather than the 10 you know they have a guaranteed payment an update adjustment a settle up adjustment a dynamic adjustment I mean so um until we know what an update adjustment a settle up adjustment a dynamic adjustment is it's it's really hard to say what that number is going to end up being one of the things that we have to remember too is that there's a whole harmless clause in there so if a college unlike us where we think we stand to gain money but if a college is not at the funding that they were prior to the new house bill eight then the the state is going to keep them whole for two years so that's why all of these adjustments are going to be necessary so that would take from one college that they had said they're going to get more and would give it to the colleges to no they're no they're not going to take from say from us and then move that to another college they're they're taking so they're holding a reserve back yeah well I don't I don't know exactly how they're using that money I don't I don't know that but they certainly aren't going to make a correction in the sense that again we would be looking at a fixed pie if we're talking we're talking about a true allocation model which is different than the approach we had before which was a fixed pie where everything was just recalculated and where that that would have that would have applied but that's definitely not the case now but as as Regent Morfantino just stated if a college stands to lose funding the the state will hold them harmless and they will get at least the same appropriations as they received during the last biennium to keep them full so for two years we won't get any less money absolutely not right don't you mean okay so so we I think at this point what any good CFO would be saying is don't even think about the money we might get once it's figured out focus on what we know we're gonna get and no less and when that money does come to us it will come it won't be lost it won't be you know hidden away and we maybe mid-year budget adjustment you know whatever and deal with it when we know what we know but I think when you don't know what you know when you don't know anything you can't do anything. Annette's making sure we don't count our chickens. 

I'm trying to but I can tell you what we do know and we've known this since the day that I interviewed to become president here and that is that the average percentage of students who go to college from high school in our area is only 50 percent. That is where we are focused. We are focused on increasing that percentage to be everyone as high as it can be and we have lots of opportunities and the state's new funding model is also going to provide us additional opportunities to help us move in that direction.

(1:07:23 - 1:07:58)
Because I think you said that that money doesn't all of it doesn't hit our cash bucket it could be these TEOG's and all kinds of other things that don't really affect our revenue stream like we're talking about here right? That's correct. So we don't know all those details. Right. 

We're going to get something we don't know what it is. We're going to get something and we'll wait and see what that is. Now we know that at this point based upon the last you know the one data run that I sent out to the board that we're proposed to get a million dollars in additional TEOG funding.

(1:07:58 - 1:09:25)
We're proposed to get about five hundred and sixty thousand dollars in dual credit funding neither of which come to us and approximately 14 million over the next biennium. But again it's too uncertain. But we have great anticipation to find out what it will be. 

And I can tell you that my colleagues are very eager to know what their actual numbers will be. But even when we have some actual numbers we understand that it is a dynamic model that can shift over the next two years and we really need to be very conservative and not count on any funding from that model. So I said you'd be the second to know actually you're probably going to be like the third person to know what that number will be so. 

Okay well thank you very much. If there's no more questions we will well the next I won't adjourn we I'm going to ask the question on the it's on the agenda I already know the answer to this but executive session probably shouldn't have been on the part and then we will adjourn this meeting and take a five minute break before we start.