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On Sept. 30, the Navajo County Community College District Governing Board met at the Northeast Arizona Training Center (NATC) in Taylor for their retreat. The board received a tour of the grounds at NATC to see where Northland Pioneer College (NPC) will be adding an existing structure at the back of the property to house a new conference room.
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After the tour, the board was given a presentation by Vice President of Administrative Services Maderia Ellison about the need for more internal controls regarding the Payroll and Human Resources Departments.
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Ellison made the board aware that in the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 academic years, clerical and system errors caused some compensation issues with several employees’ salaries. In the 2018-2019 academic year, two staff and five faculty members were overpaid and one faculty member was underpaid resulting in a total close to $43,000 worth of errors. In the 2019-2020 academic year, only one faculty error has been found where an employee was overpaid by $111 due to a math error.
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After an internal audit was done, Vice President Ellison reported that the root cause of the errors were new employees who tried to rush new contracts, confusion with an outdated system where much of the work is done manually causing input errors, and limitations from the Jenzabar system used throughout the college and many other rural colleges.
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Employees are being contacted and collaborated with to correct the errors that were made. Some employees have already set up a payment plan with NPC to pay back what they were overpaid. Ellison presented the findings of this matter to the Board and will present them with options on beginning the transition to a new system at a later meeting.
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“I just wanted to say we’re sorry this happened, it’s unfortunate that it did, it has a direct impact on our employee’s livelihood and we want to make sure we have better, stronger controls in place so we don’t have a negative impact on our employees,” said Ellison.
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Also discussed at the meeting was the Master Facilities Plan, which would upgrade the Northland Pioneer College facilities in the different districts. Points of contention were the Kayenta facility, which is a leased facility on tribal lands and a possible market study for all NPC locations.
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New Construction Manager Richard Strickland and Ellison presented a proposal from SPS+ Architects, LLC of Scottsdale, which included three different proposals for the plan. The upgrade of the Kayenta facility will require further discussion with the township as it is unclear whether NPC will be allowed to make any upgrades to the facility at this time.
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The first proposal was a review of the 2012 Master Facility Plan and includes the Kayenta location and the market study. The total cost would be $234,170. Upgrades to the Kayenta facility alone would cost $20,570 and the market study would cost an additional $25,000. The Board was unsure if this price would be worth the information gained from the study.
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The second proposal would exclude the market study and was priced at $209,170. The third proposal would exclude the Kayenta location and the market study and would cost $188,600. The planning process to choose a proposal and begin moving forward with the project is expected to take approximately three months.
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