McHenry County Blog

This is the third part of my article on the MCC MAP meeting Tuesday night

The McHenry County College Promise, Todd McDonald told me, has already completely processed 650 high school graduates.

Another 170 or so await a report from the U.S. Department of Education to see if they are eligible for Free Application for Federal Student Aid. This FAFSA process takes 3-4 weeks, so high school grads who haven’t started the process yet probably won’t get an answer in time for classes to start.

“What a nice problem to have,” Ally said.

Telling me that college enrollment was up 55%, MCC Board President George Lowe observed,

A woman asked if the extra students wouldn’t cost more money, perhaps, she suggested, more than the resulting extra tuition.

Ally made two responses that I caught:

• “Our goal should be to have fuller classes running.
• “We’ll run extra sections with adjunct faculty.”

Part-time teachers are a LOT cheaper that the full-timers.

Suggestions from the tables that I jotted down included “hybrid classes.” That was defined as half in the classroom, half online.

I think it was the same table that said this about state financial assistance:

“We were hopeful that state funding might increase…but not too hopeful.”

It’s good to have a sense of humor.

Taking photos while taking notes makes it difficult to link the two. The table with the sense of humor is either above (the last one to report) or below:

Lowe took the floor at the end of the meeting and pointed out that state financial assistance had gone down from 23% to 7.9% over the last sixteen years.

That 23% was less than what the committee that led the 1967 junior college referendum effort presented to taxpayers.

The state told the organizers that it would provide one-third.

With a ten-cent referendum rate request, the committee told voters that

• the state would pay one-third
• the students would pay one-third and
• the taxpayers would pay one-third.

Obviously, the state junior college promoters lied.

Note, however from the pie chart that while the taxpayers now pay 59.6%, almost twice what voters were told their share would be, students do not pay the 33% that was presented in 1967.

Tuition brings in 29.3% now.

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.

That’s the number I counted sitting at tables.

21 women and 10 men.

There were about 60 at the first meeting.

I continue to believe that spending $137,750 on this project is unmerited. St. Louis referendum tax hike facilitator UNICOM-ARC is the main beneficiary.

There were only two of us at our front and center table. Naturally, we were encouraged to move to tables where there could be more interaction.

One lady invited us over, saying there were too many college people at her table.

So, the number of non-college people and non-members of the organizing committee there were at the tables had to be pretty slim.

Moderator Steve Weskerna kicked off the meeting. He asked us to pretend we were McHenry County College trustees.

The topic was finances.

Acting CEO Ron Ally, the college’s finance guy this century, gave a power point presentation that I thought unfair at only one point.

He compared a 4.2% increase in property taxes to a 1.1% increase in tuition to 1% increases in enrollment and a whole list of expenses.

You can look at the slide above (click to enlarge any image), which compares

a one penny (per $100 of assessed valuation) increase in property tax rate bringing in $962,305
to
a $1 per hour tuition increase yielding $112,794.

I learned one compares comparables to comparables.

So, from an “issue framing” point of view, I thought the presentation was slanted toward raising taxes.

More on finances tomorrow.