The Northern Marianas College asked the Legislature on Monday for a $10.7-million budget for fiscal year 2021, as the House Ways and Means Committee kicked off its series of budget hearings at the House chamber on Capital Hill.<\/p>\n
In justifying its request, college officials said the requested amount, totaling $10,786,372, would pay for the college\u2019s staff, its Board of Regents, Super Typhoon Yutu expenses, utilities, overload\/adjunct instructors, Small Business Development Center operations and personnel, and other expenses.<\/p>\n
In the budget request he sent the Legislature earlier, Gov. Ralph DLG Torres proposed a budget of just $2.8 million for NMC, from the $5.9 million allocated in last year\u2019s budget. Its board of regents is being proposed to be allocated $51,158, also a drop from last fiscal year\u2019s $107,853.<\/p>\n
According to NMC interim chief finance officer, Shelly Tudela, NMC relies solely on the appropriations request since it will help NMC pay salaries and benefits for staff. NMC has a total of 150 employees that will be funded by the budget.<\/p>\n
In a slideshow presentation by NMC interim president Frankie Eliptico, he explained that 78% of the requested funds will go to salaries and benefits, while 9% will go to Super Typhoon Yutu expenses, 6% will go to overload\/adjunct instructors, 3% for utilities, 2% for SBDC personnel and operations, 1% for NMC\u2019s Board of Regents, and 1% for other expenses.<\/p>\n
Although NMC gets federal funds, these funds do not cover staff salaries and benefits. In fact, Eliptico said that these federal funds will allow NMC to \u201crebuild and establish NMC\u2019s footprints in the CNMI.\u201d He reiterated that NMC relies heavily on legislative appropriations and Torres\u2019 help to be able to pay locally funded employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs CFO Shelley mentioned, there are these [federal] funds that we\u2019re pursuing [but] none of them fund operations, and that\u2019s where we look to you, because if you saw the pie chart earlier, NMC is pretty much an $18-million to $20-million operation every year\u2014from our federal programs to other programs and services\u2014[and] we rely on the legislative appropriation and the governor\u2019s help in the budgeting process to be able to provide funding for our locally funded employees,\u201d said Eliptico.<\/p>\n
The college does have some federally funded staff such as NMC\u2019s Cooperative Research, Extension, and Education Services program; Project Proa, which helps students provide tutoring\/mentoring services for other students; the Adult Basic Education program; and programs that help individuals with disabilities, etc.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to assure you with extreme confidence that we are doing our best to find other dollars out there\u2026and we\u2019ve been very successful. The funding that we\u2019ve been able to secure in just the last year has not been seen in NMC\u2019s 40-year history,\u201d said Eliptico. \u201cI\u2019m not saying that to toot our own horn. I\u2019m saying that because we want to come here letting you know that, again, we\u2019re trying to help ourselves by finding these funds, but we need your help on these locally funded salaries.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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