LILLINGTON — Central Carolina Community College is feeling the impact of the tight state budget as the state demands a reversion — give back — of part of the college’s 2008-09 funding appropriation.

Reversions have been a fact of life for state-funded institutions for years, but it is hitting particularly hard this year. According to Wayne Robinson, Central Carolina C.C.’s vice president of administrative services, the state’s fiscal year 2008-09 appropriation to the college of $28.8 million is only a few hundred more dollars than last year’s appropriation.

In spite of that, the state is requiring a 2 percent reversion, a return of $490,000. The college expects the state to require an additional 1 percent reversion as early as November of this year. With the reversion, the state funding has decreased even as the student population has grown by about 6 percent.

The college also receives funding from Chatham, Harnett and Lee counties, which it serves. For the 2008-09 fiscal year, it will receive a total of about $3.3 million from them.

The board approved the budget reversion to the state. Of the amount, $250,000 will come from curriculum instruction funds; $198,000 from non-instructional; and $42,000 from general administration.

“Despite the reversion, the trustees made it clear that we will do whatever it takes to maintain the quality and integrity of our programs,” college President T. Eston Marchant III said after the meeting.

Oct. 22 was Marchant’s first trustees’ meeting since assuming the presidency of the college on Aug. 15. The trustees welcomed him.

“We are very pleased to have you as our new president,” Bobby Powell, chairman of the board, said to Marchant. “Everyone has been very complimentary of our choice.”

In response, Marchant said, “I am thrilled to be here and I am looking forward to working with you. During my interview with you, you told me that the college was a wonderful place to work with great employees and that this area is a great place to live. You did not tell me how universally loved and appreciated this college is in this area. I haven’t been any place since assuming the presidency where the college hasn’t come in for praise, and I give you trustees credit for this direction.”

Among the business at the meeting were the following items:

• Distribution of copies of the college’s recently completed Facility Master Plan, showing facility needs in its service area.
• Board approval to terminate the community journalism program due to low enrollment.
• Receipt of a $30,000 Minority Male Mentoring grant from the North Carolina Community College System to improve the academic success, attendance and graduation rates of minority males.
• Report on the college’s offering distance education courses to high school students through the “Learn and Earn” program. The classes are free to the students.
• Introduction of Annick Joseph, of Raleigh, the new SGA representative to the board. She is a broadcast and university transfer student from Raleigh.
• An update on the college’s physical facilities:

• Approval by the board of a purchase option agreement for the college’s Telephony Building on Tiffany Drive, in Sanford. Wise Developments has offered $330,000 for the building and approximately one acre of property. The option is in force until Jan. 31, 2009. The Telephony Building housed the college’s telecommunications program from 1971 to 2004, when the college’s N.C. School of Telecommunications opened in the Lee County Industrial Park.
• Construction is temporarily on hold for the new classroom building and joint Chatham County-college library on the Chatham Campus. The problems in the national credit markets prevented Chatham from finding buyers for the bonds to finance them.
• Open House and ribbon cutting for the new West Harnett Center takes place 2 p.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 23, at the Center, 145 Olive Farm Drive. The Center is located in the Western Harnett Industrial Park on Highway 87, south of Sanford.
• Additions to the Emergency Services Training Center are 96 percent complete. They include a classroom building, training tower, and a burn building.
• A temporary gravel parking lot with about 100 spaces will be added on the east side of Kelly Drive, across from Wilkinson Hall, on the Lee County Campus.

The board’s winter meeting will take place Feb. 11, 2009, on the Lee County Campus.