The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

PRESIDENT of The College of The Bahamas Dr Rodney Smith has revealed that his annual salary is $180,000 and that the terms of his living arrangement were chosen with cost conscious views in mind.

Dr Smith stressed that he returned to the Bahamas because of love of country, not “for the salary.”

He revealed these details during an interview with The Tribune on Friday after Union of Tertiary Educators of the Bahamas (UTEB) President Mark Humes said last week that COB’s College Council was never informed of the terms and conditions of his employment.

Mr Humes’ statement came as he made a point about his limited powers on the College Council.

“One hundred and eighty thousand dollars is the salary and instead of living in a house on the Eastern Road which cost a lot of money to rent and pay utilities for, I decided that I would take a housing allowance instead,” Dr Smith said.

Finances

“With (the) housing allowance, the option is designed specifically to help us get our finances in order. An unpredictable amount, paying for a house and utilities verses a set amount for a house allowance that doesn’t go up every month. There’s no big secret about it and I always thought it was public knowledge too. The minister (of education) said I was getting exactly what the previous president was, not a penny more, not a penny less. I don’t understand why there was a question about $400,000. Wishful thinking.”

Last September, The Nassau Guardian reported that Dr Smith had asked for a $400,000 annual salary to return to COB’s helm. Minister of Education Jerome Fitzgerald later said Dr Smith’s salary would be “reasonable” and in line with that of past presidents.

Dr Smith added: “I came home because I love my country and I really want to make a difference here. I didn’t come for the salary. If I had stayed in the US you know it would’ve been a lot different.

“My purpose for coming home is to work my butt off and make a difference which is what I think I’ve been doing so far.”

College Council Secretary Michael Stevenson noted on Friday that the team dealing with Dr Smith’s contract was separate from the president search team, which explains why Mr Humes may not have known about Dr Smith’s salary.

He was only a part of the search committee.

On the matter of a Baker Tilly & Gomez (BTG) audit of the college’s finances for 2011 that was completed this year, Dr Smith tried to put the focus on the improvements that are being made at COB, not the areas of past weakness that have left some calling for a forensic audit of the institution.

One concern raised by BTG was its inability to trace whether restricted funds were used in accordance with the wishes of donors.

To this, Dr Smith said: “One of the areas that was highlighted is the restricted funds accounts and we do have a policy in place, and in addition to having a policy in place we are also creating a grants and sponsored programmes management area unit and that unit will be totally responsible for managing the accounts, managing the budgets associated with restricted funds, making sure those moneys are spent in accordance with donor specifications.

Audit

“All of our restricted funds right now are kept in separate funds, untouchable restricted funds. What you refer to from the 2011 audit was, to my understanding, a mistake of moving some funds from one of those accounts and then putting them back in. But the way it was reported in the audit was as if there were no controls.

“But controls that are in place now were not in place in 2011.”

Another point raised by the audit, which was leaked to The Tribune last week, was that COB does not have a policy of conducting physical counts and inspection of fixed assets.

To this, Dr Smith said: “We did not have a facility maintenance programme.

“We did not have an enrolment management programme.

“We’re working on all of these now. We have to put five-year plans in place, like what we’re doing now with maintenance of the campus because we never had one before so every time the government changes, the council changes, the administration changes, everyone starts all over and you can see the destructiveness in that.

“Right now we’re putting together a five-year plan so that we know which buildings next year will be shut down for complete renovation, which roofs need to be changed.

Campus

“We’re assessing where we have to put in new furniture, where we have to go in and actually outsource certain services like air-conditioning maintenance, something where we have about three or four A/C persons on campus but we have about 300 air-conditioning units. It’s impossible. We have a physical plant of about six to eight people so by the time they are finished moving from one side of the campus to the next side of the campus, that side is already overgrown again so it’s almost impossible for them to do that, so we are now putting pieces in place to assure continuity so that whenever the government changes we won’t have to change here.”

The audit also noted the need to adequately train staff and provide them with sufficient materials.

Responding to this, Dr Smith said: “We have been working in efforts to restructure the entire business office and finance administration.

“We’ve made a decision to bring in a special advisor that will be here November 1 to really help us to reorganise and retrain all of our staff in the business office and help us to write standard operating procedures manuals.”

Dr Smith was appointed as COB’s newest president last year.