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CBT Case Studies
College of the Sequoias
 Budget Review and Accountability Monitoring System
The Sequoias Community College District requested the services of the College Brain Trust to review and validate budget assumptions, develop a process for board committee review and provide board and staff training. The project included three phases:
Phase 1: Assist in structuring a board committee for finance review and train board committee members in necessary skills to perform such a financial review.
Phase 2: Assist in creating a budget and expenditure monitoring system built on the dashboard concept and train senior staff and board finance committee members in using the tool.
Phase 3: Review college budget, expenditure and accounting practices to assist the college in anticipating and correcting revenue and expenditure variances from budget assumptions.
The work of the College Brain Trust on the project was praised by two key fiscal services staff members, Chief Accounting Officer Linda McCauley and Dean of Fiscal Services Leangela Miller. They described the project and CBT’s work:
Per a letter received from Mr. Hill dated November 2009, the recommendations given to the district were as follows: (a) general recommendations are intended to strengthen the overall integrity of the financial data and operational decision making, enhancing the fiscal stability of the College, (b) goal of those recommendations is to generate more active participation by staff in managing the College’s resources for the best results, (c) information needs to be direct, simply stated and clear in its meaning, and (d) needs a better understanding by the broader community and a confidence that the budget is being done right and there are multiple sets of eyes attending to the budget.
Mr. Hill provided the district with 12 documents that would support the above recommendations. The information that would be provided in these 12 documents would assist the district on meeting the desired outcomes for our constituents. At the first review of the 12 documents, fiscal staff Leangela Miller and Linda McCauley began to discuss and compile the data in the recommended formats. As noted by Mr. Hill, we had the autonomy to change items as we saw fit to add the look of COS. We realized throughout this process that the district was already providing some of the information, but not in a formal/timely manner which is what Mr. Hill recommends.
As the fiscal staff began working on the 12 documents, we met with several committee groups, Board of Trustees budget committee and Dr. Scroggins for input. The entire process took approximately two months to complete and the district has a working budget report that consists of 14 items. In our opinion, the compiled budget documents have met each of the recommendations mentioned in paragraph one. Once all changes were incorporated into the documents, the documents were presented to our constituents. Discussion of the documents were shared with Cabinet, College Council, The Budget Standing Committee, The Board of Trustees Budget Committee, The Board of Trustees Retreat, and the documents were provided on Dr. Scroggins Weekly Board report that is sent out to “Everyone” on campus.
Throughout the presentations, we have heard positive comments from staff and the Board of Trustees that the documents are clearly stated and that they have a better understanding of the college’s financial data.
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