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April 21, 2007

Trustees mull response about funding issue

By Bob Belcher The Corsicana Daily Sun Sat Apr 21, 2007, 04:01 PM CDT

In a roundtable type discussion during the Navarro College Board of Trustees meeting Thursday, board members reviewed a draft of an editorial response addressing questions about funding of Ellis County campus operations.

While not listed as an official agenda item, the discussion occurred during the a report by Dr. Richard Sanchez, college president. Sanchez asked Lloyd Huffman, board secretary, to review with the board a proposed editorial reply to a series of recent opinion page submissions by both Homer Wasson, college board chairman, and Joe Hazewski, a regular opinion columnist in the Daily Sun.

Sanchez told the Daily Sun before Thursday’s meeting the discussion was originally scheduled to take place during a closed session to discuss legal matters. That closed session was canceled after questions raised by the Daily Sun about the legality of holding that discussion behind closed doors, in apparent violation of the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act.

Sanchez said he confirmed with an attorney that such discussions, including at least two recent closed door meetings held by trustees in March, were in fact in violation of the act, something both Sanchez and Wasson said they were not aware of. Trustee meetings held March 3 and March 22 both included closed door sessions they admitted were in violation of open meeting laws; a March 3 meeting with State Rep. Byron Cook where trustees discussed proposed legislation they wished Cook to carry; and a March 22 meeting, when trustees and other college administration officials discussed proposed increases in tuition and fees.

“We need to clarify the intent of the college and what we were trying to do, especially as related to two major issues I read in the paper,” Huffman said. “First, where the local tax money is going, and the second issue is how we’re paying for these campuses in these other counties, and what we were trying to do with trying to get the law changed as far as being able to call a maintenance tax election in Ellis County for the Midlothian campus.”

“There is no way we can use local tax money in Ellis County or Limestone County, even if we wanted to. There’s no way we can do it because it’s not there,” Huffman explained of the ad valorem taxes paid by Navarro County residents. Huffman reiterated a statement already published in a previous college reply claiming expenses of operating the physical plant in Corsicana exceeded tax revenues by more than $180,000.

“What we need to explain to the public is basically the state, and the kids, are paying for these things. That’s basically it in a nutshell,” Huffman said. Reimbursement from the state of Texas for contact hours, plus building use fees go into building the buildings and maintaining them, he added.

Huffman said that officials in Midlothian and Mexia provided substantial support through financing and land acquisition to enable Navarro to build campuses there. Citing growth figures of “100 percent over the last eight years,” Huffman said the need for expanding facilities was evident, just to keep up with the growth.

“We’re about through,” Huffman added of the expansion projects. “I think as a board, our sense is we’ve done enough, and that’s it. We don’t want to have to raise the tuitions anymore than we have to, and we don’t want to raise the building fees any more than we have to.”

However, growth reported at the Midlothian campus will soon require another building there, he said.

“How are we going to do it? The only way to do it if we’re not going to encumber any more debt, which we don’t want to do, is to try to get the folks up there to pass a maintenance tax,” something Huffman said would be “no more than five cents (per $100 assessed valuation), and maybe even two or three cents.”

Huffman said the college could have asked the Midlothian ISD to call for the election to vote on a maintenance tax, but officials there didn’t want to do it because they needed to try to pass a bond package of their own to fund expansion of its facilities.

By getting legislation passed to enable the college to be able to call for an election itself, the process would be streamlined, making it easier to accomplish. Voter approval would still be required for the maintenance tax to pass, however.

“We can’t tax those people. They’ve got to vote for it themselves,” Huffman explained. “We just want to have the election so they could decide if they wanted us to build another building for them. That’s all there is to it.”

Sanchez said the college is reviewing information contained in its response and will be forwarding a final draft to each trustee for their review and addition of any comments to be submitted to the Daily Sun.

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Bob Belcher may be contacted via e-mail at belcher@corsicanadailysun.com

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