[media-credit name=”                                                    Kavalier” align=”alignleft” width=”207″][/media-credit] 

San Jose City College President Barbara Kavalier has approved the discretionary and operating budgets of lottery funds, a supplementary budget for the fiscal year of 2012-13. The approved budget is more than half a million dollars different from the submitted proposals.

The submitted proposals totaled $1.87 million. The Finance Committee and the College Planning Committee drafted identical recommendations for the president, with spending totaling $1.33 million. Kavalier approved $1.31 million, a difference of $20,660.

“I certainly appreciated the recommendations,” Kavalier wrote in an email, noting that the committees are “advisory.”

Though the recommendations of the committees and the president’s approved budget are nominally similar, there are a lot of differences.

A grand summary document released at the Finance Committee showed the total itemized changes.   The Finance Committee and CPC recommended the advertisement budget be capped at $7,000, while the president approved $31,900.

The committees recommended that the non-instructional classified hourly budget be set at $120,000, while the president approved $155,284

The Finance Committee is motioning to ask the president for clarification of the changes, but Takeo Kubo, chairman of the committee, reminded the committee members that the president has no obligation to answer to the committee.

“The buck stops there,” said Greg Nelson, vice president of Administrative Services, to the Finance Committee, eluding that the president has full authority to act independent of the recommendations of the committees.

The president has made no official statement at this time to the committee explaining the changes.