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Edison meeting: President Walker to retire, Browder out, Atkins back

By Staff | Apr 27, 2011

The Board of Trustees voted unanimously to accept all of the proposals.

James Browder is out and will get a $175,000 compensation package. He could have sought more than $600,000 if he wanted his three-year contract to be honored.

Steve Atkins will return to Edison State College on May 2 at his former salary of $141,000 and will receive five weeks of back pay.

Finally the Board accepted Walker’s plan to retire in two years and take a 1 year sabbatical, fulfilling the final three years of his contract. Walker would then come back as a full time teacher.

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Earlier report:

Edison’s embattled Vice President James Browder could be without a job, President Kenneth Walker could be retiring and a former administrator could be back in the fold at the state college, according to a revised Board of Trustees agenda.

There are three different proposals added to this afternoon’s agenda.

One would end Browder’s tenure with the school.

The other would reinstate Steve Atkins, who was the Vice President of Academic Affairs.

The final proposal would talk about the succession plan for Walker, who has offered to take a pay cut to end the recent drama at the school.

POSTED EARLIER

Edison State College’s Board of Trustees meets today at 4 p.m.

The board’s regularly scheduled meeting is likely to be dominated by discussions centering on recent controversies at the college, including new proposals designed to offer improved transparency of board actions, an update on an investigation into claims of race discrimination in hiring and a presentation to the board on the salaries and benefits paid to college President Kenneth Walker and Senior Vice President James Browder.

Browder was reassigned to an off-campus legislative liaison role after faculty voiced concerns about his management style. At an April 6 meeting, Walker had pledged to decrease both Browder’s pay and his own, and last week, he offered more details about what that decrease would look like.

Walker is proposing Browder’s salary be reduced to $160,000 annually from $208,000. The $160,000 rate is the salary Browder was initially hired at in September when he was brought on as the vice president of operations, soon before he took on the senior vice president role.

Walker has also proposed Browder be brought back to campus, though an agenda item that called for a board vote on that proposal was removed last week and turned into an information item. Likewise, the board will hear a presentation on Walker’s salary, but will not take a vote on a proposed contract extension that would have guaranteed Walkers’ employment at Edison another year through 2015.

Walker currently makes $832,125 in salary and benefits. Last week he released a proposal calling for him to cut $12,400 from his base pay, to drop his $73,000 retirement incentive and $48,000 retention bonus, and cut $31,000 from his deferred compensation taxable retirement benefit, among other cuts. The proposed cuts total just shy of $179,000.

Walker has come under heavy fire for his high pay. State statutes decree that colleges cannot pay their executives a base salary of more than $225,000 from state money. Asked on Thursday for a delineation of where Walker’s current compensation comes from, the college provided a breakdown:

¦ $225,000 in base salary, $167,618 in retirement and health benefits from state funds;

¦ $277,705 from excess auxiliary funds (such as revenues from food service, book store and performing arts hall);

¦ $113,442 from investment earnings/sales and services/miscellaneous (such as leasing of college space to outside organizations);

¦ $48,360 retention bonus from the Edison Financing Corporation.

The trustees meet at 4 p.m., in the Rush Library Auditorium, room J-103, on the Lee County campus. Video feeds of the meeting will be available on each of the other three campuses: Collier Campus room J-103, Charlotte Campus room O-117, and Hendry/Glades Center room A-110.