Beaufort Commissioners Oppose Merger of Beaufort Community with Pitt Community | Eastern North Carolina Now

Beaufort Commissioners oppose merger of Beaufort Community with Pitt Community

    At the August County Commissioners meeting, Beaufort Community College President David McLawhorn appeared before the board asking it to adopt a resolution in opposition to the "merger" of Beaufort with Pitt Community College, and presumably according to his comments, with any other college.

    The request grew out of a study done by the General Assembly that found that several million dollars a year could be saved be consolidating some functions of the smaller colleges that are relatively close to a larger one. Since then there has been a rather vociferous outcry from those colleges that would be "merged" and a campaign has been conducted to get various governing bodies to oppose the move. At the last Washington City Council meeting the council voted to support such a resolution in opposition.

    In the end, the Beaufort Commissioners voted 6-1 to oppose Beaufort's being merged with anyone. The dissenting vote came from Robert Cayton, not because he favored such a merger but rather he wanted the resolution to not only object to Beaufort's being combined but to also preserve all of the existing colleges.

    You can watch Dr. McLawhorn's presentation and the subsequent discussion. Although technical difficulties during the latter part of the board's discussion dropped the video, the sound is there for you to listen to in the clip below.

    Commentary

    This is another of those classic cases of miscommunication. While Dr. McLawhorn and others who oppose the study's recommendations keep talking about "closing" community colleges or "merging" them, that is actually not what the study recommends. It recommends reorganizing to prevent higher costs in administration with the campuses continuing to operate as they have.

    Dr. McLawhorn is correct that the reorganizing could result in the loss of the local board of trustees and the president at the smaller schools. But we would dare say that few students would ever know that had happened if it indeed were to happen.

    Having said that, we would hasten to add that we agree that Beaufort should not be merged with Pitt. And we agree that the "loss of local control" is important. But we think Hood Richardson hit the nail more squarely on the head when he questioned the loss of county and community support if administrative control were moved to Pitt. The state has a higher claim to dictate the organization of entities like the university system where no local funding is involved. And we would object to any such reorganizations without seeing a detailed operational plan, which has not been produced by the state.

    In fact, we think there should be more, not fewer, community colleges in the statewide system. We think there should be a campus within a half-hour drive of any student in the state. Community colleges are not residential institutions. All students commute. And many of them commute to class after working all day. The drive should be as short as practical.

    If the state needs to save some money, we would suggest they transfer the "economic development incentives" (a.k.a the Governor's walking-around money) from the Department of Commerce to the community-college system. The community-college system could do more for economic development than all the incentive grants ever have.

    But we also agree that some administrative and support functions could probably be consolidated to would save money and increase efficiency. This is even more true with current technology that makes physical distance more irrelevant in terms of certain functions, such as payroll, purchasing, insurance and other "back office" business functions as well as some student services, such as the report spells out. We suspect some administrative jobs could also be cut.

    We don't think those decisions can or should be made by the legislature but rather by the state administration of the system. But where such efficiencies can be achieved by consolidation of services, it should be done and not opposed by these various governing boards (county commissions, city/town councils, etc.), which we might suggest would not like it if the community-college board tried to tell the county how it should manage the jail, how it should provide court facilities, what kind of support should be given to the local school system or whether to combine some social services or law enforcement departments. Imagine what would happen if the community-college board suggested how rescue squads and fire departments should be organized!

    You can read the report by clicking here. What you find if you read it is that it has been severely distorted. And that's a shame. Like any such study we suspect there are some worthwhile ideas in the report and some that certainly should be discarded, while others are revised. That the commissioners, or these other governing bodies, did not discuss the specifics does not speak well of their decision-making process.

    It was more appropriate for the commissioners to get involved in this issue, because of their oversight of funding, but these city councils have no business butting into any issue where they do not have a dog in the fight.

    And we would add that the General Assembly's Program Evaluation Office (PEO) is much to blame for the miscommunication simply because the report is vague and non-specific about particular institutions. We don't know exactly how BCCC would be different under a revised organization and that leaves more questions than answers. If the PEO wanted to just stir the pot, they've done a good job of that, but we're not sure they'll make good soup in this mix.

    And we have to add this.

    What is the difference between a community college here being run from Greenville and a hospital here being run from Greenville? While we understand some of the differences, it would be interesting to hear the rationale of some of these politicians who voted "for Greenville control" with few questions asked in one instance and against in the other. Again, we would ask: What are the differences? We dare say they probably don't know the answer to that...but they sure as heck voted as if they did. So much for "local control" equating to "better decisions."