A monthly meeting of the Bellevue College Board of Trustees was held on Wednesday, June 11, 2014. The meeting took place in room B201, presided by Chair Marie Gunn.
The meeting opened with the executive session which started at 11.00 a.m. It discussed collective bargaining and the evaluation of state employees. It then continued with the business session that started at 2:00 p.m. Among the trustees were Steve Miller, Lisa Chin, Vicki Orrico, Merisa Heu-Weller, Takhmina Dzhuraeva, Marie Gunn, Dave Rule, Bruce Marvin and Lisa Corcoran.
Assistant Dean of Student Programs Faisal Jaswal said, “What I am going to report today is student activities fee budget which is 2.1 million dollars, and that’s presented to the trustees at the last of the meeting. The trustees will review that and today they are going to pass the information budget and the college budget, so if they have any questions or concerns, I am the advisor of the community to reflect them to answer the questions.”
Faculty Association President Doug Brown said that his report focused on the update of bargaining process which had been moving slowly. They were asking questions of how much of this local funds and in what ways can be responsibly used to avoid the lacks of communication and transparency. The conversation between the administration and the faculty at the bargaining table had to be efficient and in an appropriate way, so the bargaining would not be in the dark.
Chace Stiehl from the social science division said, “The college administration increases the local fund anywhere about 5 million to 12 million a year. We need to know how much of that money will be available to use. We don’t understand why the whole 8 million isn’t available even if we are not going to use all of it. We are looking for the clarity around where that budget is going.”
Leslie Mayo, the president of ASG, said that this would be her last report of the year. She said, “Some of the important things that I am going to report include things that we have funded throughout the year, things that affected our students throughout the year, and maybe the projects that we have done. This will be our closing paragraph. There is nothing really new, so it is just a conclusion of everything.”