The Three Rivers College Board of Trustees on Thursday approved a $26.2 million operations budget for fiscal 2017, which reflects an anticipated enrollment decrease of 3 percent.

College financial officials attributed the decline to an improved economy.

“Higher education is countercyclical to the economy,” chief financial officer Charlotte Eubank said. “As the economy improves, more people are going to go to work instead of going to school. So typically, our enrollment falls as our economy improves.”

The budget remains balanced in the upcoming year, with no increase to in-district tuition. The biggest expense for Three Rivers remains employee salaries, which are 57 percent of the total operations budget of just less than $15 million.

That amount saw a $250,000 increase from the previous year because of a faculty and professional staff increase of 1.5 percent, a support staff increase of 2.5 percent and an adjunct raise to $15 per credit hour taught.

“We were really pleased that we were able to offer a balanced budget and able to hold in-district tuition flat, with no increase. And we were able to offer some increase to faculty and staff, including our adjunct faculty,” Eubank said.

Day-to-day college operations compose the second-largest share of the operations budget, which is 32 percent. That amount includes supplies, travel and other expenses.

Scholarships make up 6 percent of the operation budget, at less than $1.5 million. Debt interest will cost the school $1.2 million, or 5 percent of the operations budget overall.

Capital improvement equipment is included in the operations budget, at $163,700 or less than 1 percent; however, capital projects are reflected in a separate (capital) budget.

The bulk of funding in fiscal 2017 at Three Rivers comes from student tuition. The college estimates it will collect $12.4 million from students, or 47 percent of revenue.

State funding will make up the second-largest portion of funding — 22 percent, or $5.6 million.

Auxiliary revenue — merchandise, housing and college store proceeds — accounts for the third-greatest revenue stream for Three Rivers, at an estimated $3.1 million. Local property tax follows at 7 percent of expected revenue, at $1.9 million.

The capital budget, which contains large and long-term projects over $100,000, was approved at $8.1 million.

The Libla Family Sports Complex being constructed makes up the largest percentage of that budget, with $6.3 million in the upcoming year going toward the total $10.5 million project.

Funding for the capital budget comes from bond sales estimated at $5.1 million, state capital bond revenues estimated at $1.7 million and a FEMA grant for $2.5 million, $1.2 million of which will be distributed in fiscal 2017.

Other actions at the meeting included approval of a change to the description of the college alternative credit policy. What was the “Credit For Non-Traditional Learning” policy now will be the “Alternative College Credit” policy.

Officials said the change would better reflect the ways to obtain alternative credit, such as military or business experience and articulation agreements with area secondary schools.

“This was originally set as ‘Credit for Prior Learning,’ but there are more types of alternative credit than that. So we want to propose changing the name of the policy to ‘Alternative College Credit,’ which then includes all of the different ways we do it,” said college president Wes Payne.

Trustees approved an update to the college travel policy, which Payne said was necessary to reflect changes in federal guidelines.

“There are a lot of additional regulations regarding the use of federal funds for travel. The changes proposed bring us in line with those new regulations and administrative rules. There is simply a heightened level of monitoring when you use federal grant funds, and we need to update the policy,” Payne said.