Jamestown Community College and The Resource Center will help Chautauqua Institution solve one of its biggest short-term financial challenges by housing institution employees during the summer session.

The arrangement between JCC and the institution was detailed earlier this week during a webinar hosted by Kyle Keogh, interim Chautauqua Institution CEO, that was joined by roughly 800 Chautauqua Institution residents and posted to the institution’s website. The webinar gave further information on actions Keogh and his Financial Sustainability Working Group were taking to cut $5.7 million from the institution’s budget – $3 million in personnel, $2 million in operations and $1 million from programming.

Keogh said the institution has secured $1.628 million of the needed $2 million in cuts from operations. Operations savings also include eliminating the Grounds Access Pass ($450,000), improved hotel performance ($200,000), pricing changes to the Chautauqua Lecture Channel ($134,000), reducing the Chautauqua Daily’s subsidy ($168,000), charging a facility fee for all single tickets ($40,000) and buildings and grounds efficiencies ($63,000). Roughly one-third of that amount comes from moving staff off of the institution grounds to increase available housing available for paying customers to rent.

“We are going to add capacity at Jamestown Community College,” Keogh said. “The whole Financial Sustainability Working Group visited, as did some other members of senior staff. Those are beautiful dorms up there. They’re definitely nicer than living in the dorms that I lived in when I was in college or actually I think even my own kids are living right now in college. They have suites and we have the ability to take about 80 to 100 people up to those facilities. We do need to provide transportation back and forth. We have found a group called The Resource Center which will help us do. They will have hourly shuttles. But even with those hourly shuttles we will be able to save more than $500,000 a year.”

Moving staff off the grounds was necessary because rental capacity on the institution’s grounds decreased 27% between 2015 and 2025. Moving more staff off-grounds frees up additional housing for those who want to visit Chautauqua Institution and tests the idea that lack of available rental space is limiting Chautauqua’s attendance growth. Keogh said the institution plans to expand its Chautauqua on a Budget program as well as create new condo-style patron housing. Gross savings would be $765,490, but factoring in transportation costs of $192,450, the total savings will be $573,040 – more than the $400,000 Chautauqua officials had hoped to save by moving staff off-grounds. The change frees up 45 houses on the grounds and 11 houses off the institution’s grounds. Keogh said the institution will help the property owners interested in renting properties to visitors rather than to the institution for staff housing.

“Because these are great folks who’ve been tremendously generous over the years having our staff in them, we want to help them now as a transition to hopefully having patrons stay within those locations,” Keogh said.

STAFF REDUCTIONS

Keogh said the institution had set a goal of $3 million in personnel changes, but has actually found $3.3 million worth of cuts. As The Post-Journal reported on Sept. 19, a staff reorganization affecting more than 30 staff positions has taken place. Those cuts account for more than $3.3 million of the $5.6 million institution officials have trimmed from the budget.

This week’s presentation included much more detail. Chautauqua Institution has cut roughly 20% of its yearly payroll through a mix of executive pay cuts, retirements, unfilled positions being eliminated, staff reductions and area reorganizations. There have been 33 positions eliminated, including 23 involuntary separations. Cuts were made in marketing, communications and enterprises (6 positions cut, 1 changed), advancement, which was reorganized and has had 6 positions changed, programming (3 cuts, 4 changes), information technology (2 cuts), human resources (1 position cut), Buildings and Grounds (2 positions cut), project management (one position cut) and executive (five positions cut, two changed). Each individual is eligible to 6-12 weeks severance including pay, benefits and transition support.

The institution has also cut 14 positions at associate vice president levels to seven and resized two roles from vice president levels to lower levels on the organizational chart. Retirement contributions reduced from 10% to 6%, a move Keogh said helped save some positions.

Chautauqua will move forward with 124 year-round staff – fewer than 2025 but more than 111 it had in 2017. There will be 20 fewer full time year-round employees and 3 fewer part-time year-round positions in 2026 as compared to 2025.

“We had originally set a target of $3 million in personnel reductions,” Keogh said. “We actually came in a little bit above that at $3.3 million for two reasons. One is each of the executives, myself included, wanted to take a pay cut to be in solidarity with everybody. Secondly is as we go through and we have to make $5.7 million in cuts, we knew we could only make personnel cuts once. We could not come back. I thought it was better to go a little bit further rather than risking the fact that we would have to come back if we did not make sufficient cuts. That was a hard decision but we did not want any of the remaining staff to be concerned about their employment because of our financial situation,” Keogh said.