Category: Ryan Cordova

Board of regents meeting at Branch realty tuesday, February 24th, 5pm

2/21/2015

The NNMC Board of Regents will hold a Finance Committee Meeting in Santa Fe at Branch Realty Commercial Advisers on Tuesday, February 24th at 5pm. This meeting, held hidden away from Rio Arriba County and the Española Valley community at Regent Michael Branch's place of business, is subject to the NM Open Meetings Act. [1]

The public and reporters may attend, record, and document the meeting in full. On the agenda at Branch Realty Commercial Advisers are: 1) Fiscal Watch Reports, 2) Budget Adjustment Request, 3) Capital Projects Updates, and 4) Residence Hall Update.

The discussion at Branch Realty Commercial Advisers will set the financial decisions for the full Board of Regents Meeting on Thursday, February 26th (see full agenda at top right), where the Regents will vote on a tuition hike and will unveil their Plan B (or is it Plan G) for building dormitories for out-of-state students as NNMC's enrollment continues to decline precipitously. Regent Michael Branch, whose term expired on December 31, 2014, tightly controls the Finance Committee and the Board of Regents. Branch's Commercial Real Estate company's ties to the multimillion dollar dorm development project (projected by NNMC Administration and no-bid consultants to cost over $16 million) is yet to be revealed.

Branch Realty Commercial Advisers is located at: 228 S. St. Francis Drive. Bldg E, Santa Fe, NM 87501. The meeting will be held in the Conference Room. Call (505) 984-8100 for directions, or call the NNMC main switchboard and request Assistant to the President, Amy Peña, who generates agendas and public notices. Ms. Peña fulfills requests for full public agendas and meeting details. NNMC main switchboard: (505) 747-2140. Assistant to NNMC President Barcelo, Amy Peña email contact: amy.pena@nnmc.edu

February 24th UPDATE: When contacted by at NNMC by phone, VP of Finance Assistant Brandi Cordova confirmed at 2:37pm that the Board of Regents Finance Committee Meeting at Branch Realty was not publicly announced, explaining: "Oh, that meeting was not announced so I am not at liberty to share that information."

In clear violation of the Open Meetings Act, the Board of Regents Finance meeting was held as scheduled at Branch Realty with NNMC Administrators and Board of Regents members in attendance. The public was barred from entry at 5pm by VP of Institutional Advancement, Ricky Serna. At left is the internally distributed meeting agenda.

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[1] Download or view full text of New Mexico’s Open Meetings Act online at: http://www.nmag.gov/consumer/publications/openmeetingsactcomplianceguide

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NNMC Students Scrooged as Administrators Raise Tuition to Line Their Own Pockets

12/22/2014

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At their final Board of Regents meeting of 2014, NNMC Administrators discussed an “inevitable” raise in tuition for the students at NNMC. Northern Vice President for Institutional Advancement Ricky Serna proposed a tuition hike between 5 and 8%, and blamed the New Mexico State Legislature for this Administration’s inability to balance the books. Serna vaguely referred to a “a dilemma involving state lawmakers” before pointing the finger more boldly at our Legislators explaining, “We’re between a rock and a hard place… When we go to legislators to ask for more resources, the pressure we get from them is to raise our tuition. That’s the rock. The hard place is we know in a community like ours, affordability is a very sensitive subject.” (See full article on tuition hike below or at http://www.riograndesun.com/articles/2014/12/22/news/doc54920ad622305744152507.txt )

The Barcelo Administration has perfected disaster capitalism at the college, citing manufactured crisis after manufactured crisis as reasons to more than double tuition in the past three years, to cut Heritage Arts Programs and Career Tech Programs, and to reduce courses, faculty and services. When Barcelo pushed to remove NNMC's Child Development Center, popular Associate’s programs in Radiography, Automotive Technology, and Construction Trades in the spring of 2014, a coalition of faculty, staff, and students submitted a “Moral Budget” to the NNMC Board and Administration. It outlined the proposed cuts could be easily offset by minor cuts in Administrative expenditures, the over $260,000 transferred out of instructional to the expenses of the basketball team, and tracing the mysterious loss of millions in assets during the Barcelo Administration that had previously been held in CDs.

The “Moral Budget” submitted to the NNMC Board of Regents and President Barcelo was accompanied by a sheet charting the enormous growth in Administrative salaries and the addition of Administrative Assistants—several of whom are friends, family, and paramours of top Administrators. The chart showed over a million dollar increase in Administrative salaries alone. (See the "Moral Budget" and increases in NNMC Administrative expenditures at: http://www.nnmcstudygroup.org/budget.html )

It has been clear to the community that fiscal mismanagement and the extraction of resources has led to deficits, which Barcelo has used to justify cuts to instruction and direct services to students. In the 2013 Fact Book released by NNMC’s Office of Institutional Advancement, NNMC's own office noted that INSTRUCTION constitutes less than 30% of all of NNMC’s institutional expenditures, while “Institution Support” and “Other Core Expenses” (read = Administrative) are 54% of NNMC expenditures. (2013 Factbook available at: http://www.nnmcstudygroup.org/records.html )

Further, at the December 4, 2014 Board of Regents meeting where VP Serna argued for another tuition increase, VP Serna complained that faculty instructors—those who fulfill the core mission of the institution—cost $600,000 per year. By way of comparison, documents obtained by the NNMC Study Group show that NNMC agreed to pay Monument, LLC $978,000 in 2014 to “study” the need for that self-same company to build a new set of dorms (dorms currently exist on the El Rito campus). President Barcelo insisted on cutting three academic programs in Spring 2014, 7-10 full-time staff and instructors (tenured professors among them), and on eliminating the Child Development Center to make up a $250,000 shortfall in her budget. The cuts to student instruction, faculty, staff and child care equal approximately one-quarter of the total fees paid to Monument to study the needs for its own services. (A sampling of payment documents for Monument, LLC available here: http://www.nnmcstudygroup.org/monument-llc.html )

Funding for the no-bid dorm project by an out-of-state limited liability corporation was rejected by the New Mexico Board of Finance in July. The New Mexico Board of Finance was clearly disturbed by the $978,000 in fees charged by Monument Construction (balance outstanding) for a “student housing study” to—as a member of the New Mexico Board of Finance put it to the President of Monument in attendance at the Board of Finance meeting—“[do] the study to show need for housing… and you’ll build it?” Yes, NNMC’s Administration agreed to pay just under one-million dollars to Monument Construction, to determine the need for the student housing Monument would be building to the tune of $13-15 million. (Full story on New Mexico Board of Finance meeting here: http://www.nnmcstudygroup.org/blog/nnmc-dorms-indefinite-hold )

Other expenditures by Barcelo’s Administration have included flying the entire men's basketball team to Hawaii, including Coach Ryan Cordova, his wife, and children. This sports junket was paid by the transfers of money out of instructional that, per NNMC’s VP of Finance, in 2013-2014 totaled over $260,000. Coach Cordova himself receives over $70,000 per year in compensation, and his wife, Brandi Cordova, has been added to the payroll as well. She is one of the growing class of “Administrative Assistants” behind the newly built glass doors of Barcelo’s newly remodeled inner sanctum. Barcelo, perhaps sentimental about her own years playing basketball, has been NNMC's men’s basketball team’s greatest cheerleader—requesting more staff, more services, more locker rooms, more buses and vans, new equipment, new uniforms, and recruitment of men's basketball players from as far away as the Cameroon. All at the expense of instruction and student services.

NNMC President Barcelo, HR Director Bernie Padilla, President's Assistant Amy Pena, and Administrative Assistant and wife of Coach, Brandi Cordova, at away men's basketball away game

VP of Advancement Serna, Basketball Coach Cordova

While regularly articulating a budget crisis and the need for massive cuts to instruction as well as hikes in tuition, Barcelo’s Administration has insisted on establishing and funding men’s baseball, basketball, bowling, cross country and golf, and women’s basketball, bowling, cross country and golf teams.

Coaching the men's basketball team has been especially lucrative for Ryan Cordova. In addition to his salary, which far exceeds that of any faculty appointment at NNMC, Cordova's insider connections have resulted in massive monetary extraction for the Coach, whose resume includes his ownership of “Blue Sky Builders” (Cordova listed himself on his resume as Owner of Blue Sky Builders. A sampling of the original Blue Sky Builders purchase orders, invoices, and payment approvals:http://www.nnmcstudygroup.org/blue-sky-builders---ryan-cordova.html )

Coach Cordova’s family has completed numerous no-bid contracts for NNMC. The NM Secretary of State lists Ryan Cordova as the Vice President of "Blue Sky Builders" (see: http://www.nnmcstudygroup.org/uploads/1/7/6/4/17644239/cordova_biz_liscence.jpg )

The purchase orders and orders to pay the no-bid contracts (in the hundreds of thousands for 2013-2014 alone) show NNMC's internal "approval to pay signature" as Ryan Cordova's wife, Brandi Cordova. The Cordova family business “Blue Sky Builders” has invoiced the college for a remodel of the NNMC bookstore totaling $309,000, though our local Pueblo-owned Avanyu Contractors bid over $100,000 less for the remodel. (Avanyu’s owner was trained in the very Construction Trades Program that President Barcelo and the Board cut in 2014.) A small sampling of the invoices paid to the Cordova family business “Blue Sky Builders” in 2013-2014 include: $24,690 for a new porch, $19,790 to put silkscreen logo of an eagle on the tile entrance; $17,824 for remodeling the Board room; $13,472 for “debris removal” at the Auto Tech, whose program was closed by Barcelo and the Board; and over $10,000 for rust removal and maintenance for the Child Development Center closed by Barcelo and the Board in 2014.

Mapping of interconnections with President Barcelo's Executive Team--largely appointed without open hiring searches by Barcelo. Click for larger document view.

Thus, while students have seen their tuition raised from $41 per credit hour to a proposed $171-174 per credit hour in just three short years, the Cordova family has extracted hundreds of thousands in salaries, perks, and no-bid construction projects.

As NNMC students struggle to pay their last tuition payment for fall 2014 before starting their payment plans for spring 2015, and as tuition continues to increase, NNMC Administrators prioritize: unsuccessful and unnecessary dorm schemes, a sports program that exceeds its budget and is paid for by transfers out of instruction, and no-bid renovations that do more to improve the lives of the Cordova family than the lives of the students, community, or taxpayers who pay out each dollar. As the college continues to sink under President Barcelo's leadership, the Cordova family will have yet another very, very comfortable Christmas season.

And they are, no doubt, looking forward to the cash they will rake in from New Mexico Bond C, passed by voters in 2014. The Bond measure, which provides for capital expenditures for higher education improvements, will go straight from the voter and taxpayer's pockets into the already full pockets of Blue Sky Builders.

BOND C and Amendment 2 passed in Tuesday's election. Thanks to all who voted in support of Northern and education in New Mexico! #nnmc
— Northern NM College (@NorthernNNMC) November 5, 2014

NNMC Marketing Staff Stephanie Montoya, Administrative Assistant Brandi Cordova, Provost Pedro Martinez, and Basketball Coach Ryan Cordova

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Board of regents meeting at Branch realty tuesday, February 24th, 5pm

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