Yes, you have Mr.

Fatulas, Ms.

Pritzio, Mr.

Palmery, Mr.

Palmasina, Ms.

Hallman on the phone, Councilmembers DeMarco and do her.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Tonight we begin the 2024 budget process and the first of our two public hearings is required by the administrative code in the home rule charter.

Tonight we will hear from the community college of Allegheny County and the administrative branch of the county government.

I am asking that our invited guests limit their presentations to 10 to 15 minutes so we can have ample time for questions.

I'm also asking that my colleagues limit themselves to two questions in the first round, and then the following round will be unlimited if time allows.

Good evening to everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to come and speak tonight, along with uh Vice President uh Jim Flynn.

Early in the uh term, starting back in early September, you had a chance to hear from our faculty who came in to share uh the benefits and how the funding has supported and the great programs that our uh faculty and uh students are aggressively and proactively moving through their studies and the impact that we are having on our region as a whole.

As you will see in the economic impact, uh CCAC contributes about 1.3 billion dollars back.

It also shows that for every dollar that is put out for a student that has a return of $2.50, and that uh $2,050 uh per taxpayer, and that for every dollar student gains in a lifetime, it's equivalent to $4.50.

But one of the greatest initiatives is the uh individual who earns the associates degree will earn an additional eleven thousand dollars annually, which is a significant impact.

When we look at the diverse students that we serve, you will see that the majority of our students are part-time, 68 percent.

Majority of our students are female, um, followed by uh our men, and they register in both career and transfer program, with transfer being the highest.

37 percent ethnic minority, 202 full-time faculty, and we're serving about 32,000 credit non-credit students uh annually.

One of the greatest components that we do bring to our region is that 85 percent of our students live and work within the region after graduation, and 75 percent of our students graduate tax-free.

Um, I want to personally thank the county for the support that has been provided to the college over throughout my tenure as president.

It has made a significant impact, and uh Mr.

Flynn will share the impact that it has had and how we have been utilizing the funding to support the ongoing growth and development of CCAC.

Okay, thank you.

Good evening.

Uh, thanks again for having us here.

Uh I I want to talk a little bit just high level about our budgeting process.

We begin in November and December.

Uh, that culminates in a budget being passed by our Board of Trustees at the first meeting in June.

Uh for 2023-24, our current fiscal year.

We're in a we're the county's on a calendar year.

The college is on a fiscal year from July 1st through June 30th.

Uh our adopted operating budget was 107,200 107 million, 251,000.

Our plant budget, which is our capital budget uh for debt service was 9.3 million dollars.

Uh, and we adopted a capital budget of 32.3 million dollars.

Uh I do want to echo Dr.

Bullock's comment about uh we really appreciate the county's uh ongoing and continuing support.

Uh it it plays very favorably.

This past month we had uh a rating, a tabletop rating review by Moody's.

Uh in many of the discussions we talked about uh our budget, our budgeting process, and the support from uh our sponsors, uh the county and the state.

Uh we explained to them the let the legislation that's in place to give us a guaranteed two percent uh increase each year, and we also pointed out that this past year council increased our appropriation by $3.1 million.

Uh they looked upon that as very favorable.

Uh so they even noted in our uh press release that uh they they highlighted our conservative budgeting practices, and they talked about our careful expense management.

So we are good stewards of the county support, uh so we appreciate that.

Uh if you look at page 12, uh that's that's a table that shows uh our per credit tuition, our tech fee, college general fee, and student service fees.

Uh these are mandatory fees uh for CCAC and the rest of the 15 community colleges.

As you can see, see at the bottom, the highlight in yellow is CCAC's uh fully loaded tuition and mandatory fees are 163.50 per credit.

We are the lowest in the Commonwealth.

Uh the average of the 15 community colleges is $207.

So we're well below the average.

And if you look our neighbors, uh Beaver has the third highest at $245.

Westmoreland County is $210 per credit, and Butler's rate is $185.

So we are uh not only are we the lowest within uh the 15 community colleges, but even our neighbors were we're greatly below uh what they're charging.

Uh if you look at page 13, uh I always say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Uh this chart shows where CCAC lines up compared to the other 15 community colleges, and as you can see, uh it's rounded, but we're at 164 dollars.

We're on the far right.

Uh so we we work very hard to manage our budgets uh and meet our budgets.

We meet our budgets every year.

Uh we have a balanced budget and we don't have deficits.