Managers' pay at Glendale Community College gets cut again

Less than one month on the job and Glendale Community College interim President Jim Riggs is seeing his pay check shrink.

He has plenty of company.

The board of trustees on Wednesday approved 5% salary reductions for managers — including Riggs and other top administrators — some support staff, even the trustees themselves.

The cuts are expected to save the college about $444,000, the bulk of it from the management group. They remain in effect through the 2012-13 year, after which salaries will return to previous levels.

It is the second consecutive year that managers and trustees — the latter typically earn $400 a month — have accepted a 5% pay cut. Faculty members have also absorbed their share of salary concessions, including a temporary 3.95% hit that came in December after state revenues failed to meet expectations, triggering a fresh wave of cuts to education.

Faculty salary concessions for the coming year are currently being negotiated. The classified employees union has already agreed to a 3.3% reduction.

“We really appreciate what our management and classified managers and confidential employees have done — saved the college so much money,” board President Armine Hacopian said.

Still, the cuts are only a fraction of what is to come. During 2011-12, Glendale Community College had total expenditures of about $76 million. This year, the leadership faces cutting expenditures by more than $8 million. That figure includes a $4.6-million mid-year cut that will hit the college if Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative fails in November.

In that scenario, the college will be looking for concessions from its employee groups to the tune of $6 million, Ron Nakasone, vice president of administrative services, announced last month. If they can't be negotiated, the college would be forced to cancel 700 classes in spring 2013, eliminate the summer 2013 session altogether and issue layoff notices.

In total, the 112-college California community college system would lose $209 million in new funding if voters reject Brown's tax initiative.

Despite the bleak financial forecast, administrators and faculty members this week expressed their confidence in the college's future under the leadership of Riggs. On Wednesday, Faculty Guild President Isabelle Saber publicly thanked the interim president for his professionalism.

“The last three weeks have proven that the fiscal crisis was not the main reason for the dysfunctional relationship with the administration and the board,” Saber said, apparently referring to Riggs' immediate predecessors. “Case in point, we have been able to address and solve more problems in the last two weeks than in the entire year in the recent past.”

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