BUTLER TWP — With commencement happening and next year on the horizon, Jake Friel, Butler County Community College vice president for finance, gave the board of trustees a positive review of the community college’s finances for the month of April.

At the board’s Wednesday, May 14, meeting, Friel said the month of April, from a revenue standpoint, is typically pretty quiet, and that it will pick up in May when summer session tuition shows up on the charts.

Year to date, overall student fees and credit tuition are less than expected, though Friel said an increase in online courses has impacted the way student fees are collected.

“We have a lot of students now who are taking our internet courses. The good part about that is there are additional fees that get charged for those course. There are some additional costs, but in general, there are some additional fees. That’s impacting our collection of student fees,” Friel said.

He also said it was a good April for non-credit tuition, which has been a strong performer this year. Non-credit tuition brought in over $66,000 for the year as of April.

In total, Friel said, revenue is up by $400,000 compared to last year.

“Although we’re down on the enrollment side for credit tuition for what’s been budgeted, total revenue year over year, including fees, tuitions, we’re up, year over year, by $400,000. So I’ve been kind of dooming and glooming the tuition side, and the enrollment side, but we have done remarkably well with overall tuition,” Friel said.

Though there was not anything unexpected on the expenditure side in the end of the semester for BC3, Friel said rising prices could continue to affect BC3 next year, a similar warning to what he said at last month’s meeting.

“We’re pretty much where we want to be with regards to salaries and wages and benefits, but again, the cost of doing business with regards to some of our discretionary line items, it’s just getting more and more expensive, it’s the reality of the environment we’re all living in right now. Things cost more. Year over year, those expenses are higher for about every line item we have,” Friel said.

BC3 president Megan Coval told the board the college’s educational foundation had just recently received a gift from the estate of Leanne Heaton of $750,000, which will go toward scholarship use.