SC State adds 700 cameras in enhancing campus safety

The S.C. State Board of Trustees approved spending $1.2 million for the cameras, along with $1.3 million for the creation of a state-of-the-art card access system for Hugine Suites, during a May 4 board meeting.

“This will put 700 cameras throughout the campus, state-of-the-art. We can go back, and you can actually type in white car driven by someone with a brown shirt. It’ll pull up every one of those. So if there’s an event on campus where we need to track something down, they would do that. It’ll be real-time information,” said Ken Davis, director of facilities/planning and construction.

Davis said the card-access system will also be beneficial.

“It’ll just give us the ability to put eyes on these areas all the time. We’ll know if doors are propped open, we can run audits to see how many times a door was gone in, who accessed the door, when they accessed the door, just a lot of good things coming out of that,” he said.

The trustees also approved Phase Two roof replacement work at the Crawford Zimmerman building at a price of $398,762.

Davis reported on other projects, including the renovation of the university’s softball field.

“We were able to install a new 6-foot fence that now meets the NCAA guidelines, as well as a warning track and bull pens that will greatly enhance the safety of not only our players, but the visitors and those that attend games,” he said, noting that the fence was also branded with the message: “Welcome to Bulldog Softball.”

The upfit of Azalea Hall, which will house the residence life and housing department, and Phase One of work to stabilize Wilkinson Hall are among the university’s completed projects. Active projects include interior renovations to the Crawford Zimmerman building and piping work in Truth Hall.

A student outdoor pavilion area is among the projects the university has in either a design or bid phase.

“We will be receiving bids back on a couple of these next week. So we’re looking forward to getting those going throughout the summer. One of the ones we’re really excited about … is a student outdoor pavilion area. We have that in design now. … It will not be complete when students return, but very soon thereafter,” Davis said.

S.C. State Controller Brenda Walker discussed the current position of the university’s finances and gave a budget summary as of March 31.

“This is very preliminary because there are certainly financial transactions like an update of the HEERF (Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund) outflows and inflows, which are GASB requirements that the university would not have the information to update until year end,” Walker said.

According to preliminary unaudited figures ending March 31, 2022, the university’s operating revenues were $58,023,699 and $86,008,984 in operating expenses, leaving a negative net operating income of $27,985,285 — excluding any revenue or expenses related to CARES HEERF funding.

Unaudited figures have the university’s total assets standing at $183,375,467 vs. total liabilities of $147,925,672, resulting in a positive net position of $53,362,862 as of March 31, 2022.

“The important takeaway from this statement also is the $25.8 million increase in net position from prior year March to the current year March, and that is mainly due to the forgiveness of the HBCU capital loan,” Walker said.

Regarding the university’s income statement, Walker noted the changes in net position from a year-over-year comparison.

“There was a decline of about $6.1 million, and that’s due to reduction in donations directly to the university that the university recorded. Last year this time, we had about $3.5 million in donations recorded by the university,” she said.

Walker continued, “We budgeted total revenues of $73.4 million. That includes $8.5 million of CARES Act HBCU funding. We have received in all revenue categories a total of $53.3 million. So we got about another $20 million in revenue we have yet to realize.

“In total, the university has realized about 73% of its revenue budget, and we are 75% through the year at March 31. So we’re pretty much on target overall.”

Walker also gave a snapshot of the university’s expenditures.

“Of the $73.4 million budgeted, we’ve expended about $49.7 million. There’s another $23.6 million of expenditures that could be expended by the university between March 31 and year end. Comparing the $49.7 million of expenditures to the revenue brought in, we do have a budget surplus as of March 31 of about $3.5 million,” she said.

Walker said the university did apply for additional federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.

“That application was submitted on April 8, and we qualified because we are a school institution serving degree-seeking students of which 50% or more were Pell Grant recipients,” she said, noting that the university’s 5.6% decline in enrollment from fall 2019 to fall 2020 also made it eligible to apply for the funding.

Trustee Doris Helms said she’d like to see a better picture of the university’s uncollectible debt.

“The one thing that put us into an $18 million hole seven years ago was the amount of uncollectible debt was hanging over the university. It greatly concerns me if we’re going back into an increasing amount of uncollectible debt. It means that we need to look very carefully at our policies for allowing students to re-enroll if they have a certain amount of debt on the chart,” she said.

Helms continued, “I’d like to know. Is this going up? I understand you’re doing a better job of collecting, but in the long run, in the totality of it, is this over the last four or five years increasing or decreasing? It greatly concerns me because of what we experienced seven years ago.”

Trustee Wilber Shuler, finance committee chairman, said, “You’re correct. We need to be able to say whether this is current receivable or receivable from years in the past. So the way to do that is to see what percentage of our collections are for this year as opposed to last year so we can determine whether we’re doing better at collecting our fees or worse.”

Shuler also reported that Stathis Poulos, of BDO LLP, the university’s external auditing firm, is working to submit the university’s single audit, or their federal compliance audit specific to the federal funding that the university receives, by an August deadline.

In other matters, the university approved continuing to operate under Fiscal Year 2021-22 budget levels until information on key factors that contribute to the budget are finalized, including all authorized state appropriations and a solid projection of Fall 2022 enrollment.