Sullivan County Community College Must Re-Focus

Sullivan County Community College sadly has little direction and purpose in our county.

We hope Wednesday’s meeting between State SUNY officials, the county, and SCCC trustees and administration was informative and productive.

Taxpayers are being asked to supplement the college while many children attend schools outside our county. As part of the SUNY system, SCCC is funded by tuition as well as state and county funding.

But the worse part might be that upon graduation from either Sullivan County Community College or other teaching institutes our graduates do not stay here. Sullivan County has very little to offer them in the means of quality employment.

The future of our local higher learning institute must be determined.

Do we really need a two year college? Or perhaps the answer might be turning the facility into a four year university, and creating a “college town” here similar to New Paltz.

There must be a mandate to decide on proper curriculum and what jobs a degree at the college will lead to. Sullivan County Community College was once highly regarded for its hospitality and nursing programs.

Sadly, our resort industry is mostly defunct as all of our great hotels are gone. And, with all of the medical cutbacks, nursing jobs are becoming few and far in between.

Legislator Leni Binder has said that the county has to make up its mind if it wants a college or not and not just let it “fall by the wayside.” Binder is right on target.

The college has started to bleed our county financially and it is giving us little in return. It clearly is falling apart.

The administration of our local higher education institute recently requested an additional $1 million from the county and was only handed $110,000. The county now gives the college $3,787,413 per year.

Our legislative leaders told school president Mamie Golladay that we did not have the monies to allocate additional funding as the county is already in a budget crises.

Legislator Ron Hiatt went even further indicating that the county was looking at hitting taxpayers with an additional 4 percent property tax hike this year to meet its own budget.

Legislator Kathleen LaBuda has correctly blamed the State of New York for not adequately funding the college. She noted that state covered only 22 percent of the college's budget, even though it's supposed to fund 40 percent.

Even though it will still leave the facility in the red, State Senator John Bonacic recently came up with more funding for the college.

Golladay, in learning of the legislature’s refusal to grant additional funding, threatened that the college might have to entail massive cutbacks. This would include layoffs, closing the Monticello Campus, Elderhostal program, and slashing other curriculum.

A threat of cutbacks or attempting to raise tuition at the college is not the answer.

The college administration has to seriously look at what it is doing wrong.

There are numerous revenue streams being neglected by the institution. For example, Sullivan County Community College could rake in huge amounts of monies by offering many diverse online courses. Instead, we rank amongst the lowest in the state in the field.

Legislator Rodney Gaebel told me the legislature has had three multi year budget agreements with the college which were all broken. Gaebel asked, “Where is the financial planning?”

Without a Doubt - Sullivan County Community College has a big predicament.

The State of New York, school administrators, and our elected officials must work to correct these problems immediately.

A school offering an education is a terrible thing to waste.

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