During the Navajo County Board of Supervisors meeting last week the board heard a presentation by Northland Pioneer College (NPC) Vice President of Administrative Services Maderia Ellison, who gave a report on the college’s financial overview and its funding sources.
Ellison said, “We are a political subdivision and get our authority from the Arizona Revised Statutes. Part of that political subdivision allows us to provide assessed taxes. We are audited every year by the Arizona Auditor General and this information is from our most recent audit that ended in June 2019.”
The Navajo Community College District, which is the legal name of the NPC family, is funded by three sources according to Ellison. “When community colleges were first established, the thought was that the funding would come from three sources; the students, the state and the local taxpayers. It was thought that it would be split between those as one third, one third, one third. NPC’s current funding model does not look like that historic model. Instead, our state provides about 25 percent of our funding, seven percent from students through tuition and fees and the majority of our funding model comes from local taxpayers, over 40 percent.”
She continued, “There is a maximum increase on taxes that we can do each year. It is a two percent over the prior year levy that we are allowed. With the exception of fiscal year 2013-14, the college has always assessed the maximum tax levy.”
A portion of the college’s funding comes from state appropriations. Ellison explained there are three sources of those monies.
“We have operating and maintenance funding which is based on our full-time student equivalence, or enrollment. That has decreased over the years because of lower enrollment numbers. Equalization is another revenue stream that has actually increased as it is based on assessed property values and we rely on this source heavily. Because we are in a rural environment and our valuations are declining, the state gives us additional funding. The third funding mechanism is STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and is also based on enrollment.”
According to Ellison, the Arizona Constitution says that tuition should be as nearly free as possible and that is something NPC has always taken to heart. “We pride ourselves in having the lowest community college tuition rate in the state at $77 per credit hour. We have in our budget assumptions a slow but steady increase in tuition costs, about three percent or $2 to $3 because we have a declining enrollment.”
Expenditures at NPC are highest in the category of compensation and benefits for faculty and staff. “It is over 70 percent of our spending,” Ellison said. “We provide a distributed model of service, so we have nine campuses and centers over two counties, so salaries are a large expense.”
