News Photo by Crystal Nelson Trustees with the Alpena Community College Board of Trustees on Thursday get a first-look at the 2021-22 budget at the college.

ALPENA — The Alpena Community College Board of Trustees on Thursday received a first look at a $16.1 million budget college officials are proposing for the upcoming fiscal year.

The budget presented to the board is “a balanced budget,” and is about a $1.1 million increase over the budget adopted for the current fiscal year, officials said.

Revenues will come from a tuition increase, a 2% increase in revenue from property taxes and from state aid. A tuition increase of $4 for in-district students and $7 for out-of-district students is also proposed for next year.

The proposed budget includes restoring a full-time fine arts faculty position and a wage increase for all regular faculty and staff, increased funding for advertising and software purchases.

College officials anticipate an ending fund balance of a little over $2.5 million this year and an ending fund balance of nearly $2.6 million at the end of the 2022 fiscal year.

But College officials aren’t entirely sure what enrollment will look like in the fall.

Vice President for Administration and Finance Richard Sutherland said student enrollment looks good so far, but they really don’t know yet how many students will be enrolled.

But Board Chairman John Briggs appeared optimistic about what next year’s enrollment numbers could look like.

“Anecdotally, in the community, I’ve talked to a number of parents whose kids have sat out a year instead of going to college because they didn’t want to be in that environment with everything remote or online,” he said. “But you know, we’ve made accommodations, so we may pick up some that kind of took a gap year between high school and college and that might help us.”

However, Briggs did express concern that there aren’t as many students graduating from Northeast Michigan school districts as there used to be.

College President Don MacMaster said the college has to expand its reach, which is where digital marketing will help.

“We need to have a place for people who come from outside the area to live here and we need to have spaces and programs and I think we’re doing extremely well on dual enrollment and early middle college throughout the district,” MacMaster said.