Facing a potential $6 million cut in state funding for the 2011-12 academic year, Allan Hancock College will implement an incentive program to encourage early staff retirement.
Administrative officials expect the program to save the college up to $600,000.
At a special meeting on March 1, the Allan Hancock College Board of Trustees voted unanimously to approve the Supplemental Employee Retirement Plan, which would cover the college’s full-time employees, said Vice President of Administrative Services Betty Miller.
Miller told the Sun that in order to implement the plan, the college needs at least six faculty members and six other employees to enroll in the plan by April 29. She added that the two groups are mutually exclusive; if just one group made the participation requirement, that group could enroll and the other could not.
Employees eligible are those ages 55 or older who have been with the college for at least 10 consecutive years. The plan would allow the college’s roughly 100 eligible employees to receive 50 percent of their base salary, with a number of different pay-out periods starting at three years, should they retire by June 30, Miller explained.
“The plan includes a number of choices, and for us that’s what made it such an attractive plan,” Miller said. “It allows it to be customized for the employee, because of course everyone’s circumstances are a little different.”
Hancock hired Torrance-based Keenan Financial Services to hold information sessions for interested employees on March 8 and 9, and will continue with one-on-one counseling sessions on campus from March 14-17.
This article appears in Mar 10-17, 2011.