By: Diane Benjamin
According to this article (buried on their website), Heartland Community College is planning on not having a balanced budget until 2021. https://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/education/heartland-board-approves-first-budget-with-deficit/article_a0c39e6e-4dca-5637-b1ba-749dc4cd88b1.html
Do you deficit spend for 2 years or more? Government does.
The planned deficit is because they lost the authority to levy “equity property taxes” amounting to $3 million. Of course your local media didn’t ask any questions. Probably because they forgot Heartland passed a HUGE tax increase in 2016 for tax bills payable in 2017. The Operating Budget was increased 7.8% in October 2017, the overall budget went up 13.4%.
Seems like that’s way above the rate of inflation – or common sense. Tax Tax Tax, cry when you can’t tax.
Between 2013 and 2016, the owner of a $150,000 house paid 53.92 more in property taxes just to Heartland. https://blnnews.com/2017/10/04/heartlands-fleece/
Heartland Community College is just another example of government lies and taxpayer abuse. There was never supposed to be a brand new campus, but they wanted to give attendees a “college feel” instead of an affordable education.
Students have that college feel – they have to borrow money to afford Heartland.
Where is the money coming from to cover their deficit spending? I’m thinking money they stashed away, of course that means they collected more than they needed in previous years.
Typical Illinois. Your money isn’t really yours.
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Isn’t this the same “college” which claimed they would use rented quarters and not need a campus???
I believe that when this was built, they would NOT need tax payer dollars-or so THEY had us believe, that they would be fairly “self sufficient” and so maybe they have a used wind turbine for sale. That’s making them a cash cow-MOO!
and HOW MUCH EXTRA does Connect Transit spend running busses WAY out there for a few riders? They need money SO BAD, maybe they should LEARN to budget wisely, and offer a course in it!
HCC’s only hope at this point is to cut, cut and cut waste and bureaucracy from their organization. Higher education is being disrupted and in for a serious set of market corrections. Each year enrollments will continue to drop. It is not going to get better… only worse. Yes, we have a budding Transit Disconnect on our hands with HCC. They will soon be a black hole for tax payer money.
Amen!
From my past experience with HCC, I can tell you that they will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into actually cutting waste and administrative jobs. They have been adding layers of bureaucracy and non-education programs for years (like all of higher education has done). I once got into an argument with someone out there about a position they had just filled: Director of Student Engagement. Yes, they have a director whose job it is to get student involved in non-education related activities. Do you think they will want to cut that job? No, of course not. There many many more directors and Deans of Paper Clips with staffs and offices that they will resist cutting. They will of course continue to pay teachers and community education instructors really low wages while paying their administrators big bucks. So when they start crying big crocodile tears for money… don’t believe them for a minute that they have cut needless waste… because they haven’t!
You’re exactly right. And, I work in higher ed.
“You see college is not just about education…it’s also about the college ‘experience’… something that is vital for students in our world… student engagement is a wonderful way for students to become involved in non-academic programs and events….this is a vital part of what HCC is about.” And my reply to this: Your fixation on non-academic programs, student amenities and your building of layers of administrative bureaucracy have resulted in you pricing yourself out of your own market while saddling students with mountains of debt. Only when you refocus on your mission (education) and providing paths for your students to affordably and quickly get the skills and knowledge necessary to enter the job market will you be truly fulfilling your mission. All of this requires innovation (something higher education is resistant to). So their inability to innovate will lead to them continuing to lose students and require more and more public money to keep their ship afloat. Sound familiar? Transit Disconnect’s latest innovation was to add more routes…
it never fails ,, something that is supposed to be easy , affordable and good for the community , becomes self indulgent , fat with administration and tacked on self importance at high cost , and a burden to the citizens and students which it was formed to help . and unlike most who don’t have the luxury of more money every year , it instead wants to increase it’s pay , payroll and feed upon the last few dollars most have ,, as it cry’s out more , more , , more …
Academia is full of entitled snowflakes…and students too. Haha! The administrative bloat is out of control, just like the tuition. Heartland is treated as a pillar of the Bloomington-Normal community. It’s gross. No accountability, no fiscal prudence. They will never recover from this deficit spending. It’s a one-way ticket to the poorhouse. It will only get worse from here with declining enrollment and a reduced workforce/population in BN.
HCC was once an affordable alternative to ISU, never again will that be true. The HCC board developed Teri Renner syndrome & has delusions that the people wanting to go to HCC want all the perks of ISU. Well, they got it: Along with all the cool new venues at HCC you have taxpayer burden, student debt and a board that is living well beyond its means. Like Tari they have decided they know what’s good and they are willing to buy it with OUR tax dollars! HCC has gotten too big for its britches & now the burden is going to be on the taxpayer! Look out for the newest tax increase from a board who answers to no one and spends taxpayers monies like a drunken sailor
And don’t forget about all those expensive sports programs that the “College Without Walls…. or Sense” wastes your dollars on! Why a community college that was supposed to provide an inexpensive, usable education needs sports programs is illogical and unexplainable.
How sad as I have stated for some time the decision makers at Heartland should be ashamed for the way they have made the cost to go to their school unaffordable for those students whose parents can’t pay for their children’s tuition. I attended Parkland college in Champaign my parents could barely make ends meet but I was able to work a minimum wage job and pay for all my tuition plus books. Those in charge at Heartland have increased cost to a level that students especially those from a poor family can’t afford to attend. Borrowing money and going in debt is not the answer.
More on this soon!
Yes and all of the high paid administrators – Deans of Paper Clips and Provosts of Hang Nail’s salaries are being paid by kids and their parents through crazy non-dischargeable massive student loans! I have NO respect for these con men and women… and I refuse to let them tell me that they need this or that amount of money or the “kids” will suffer.