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Solano College Board Votes To Cut Football, Aquatics

FAIRFIELD (CBS13) - Faced with budget deficit of nearly $5 million, Solano Community College's board of trustees voted to cut the football and aquatics programs.

The board made the vote late Wednesday night after a three-hour meeting packed with people in opposition to the cuts. Ending the two programs will save the college about $600,000.

"Everything at the college right now is on the chopping block except for basic education," football coach Floyd Burnsed said Thursday.

The Falcons football team won the Bay Valley Conference title the past two seasons.

It's the ultimate loss for Solano football players, who battled through osing a beloved teammate to a unsolved shooting last year. Burnsed says the team became family.

"With news like no more football, now the family kind of disintegrates and they don't have that group to lean on as much," he said.

The college cut its summer school option last year to save another million dollars.

The decision to cut the football program comes after recent upgrades the campus, including adding three new practice fields with video equipment at a cost of $1 million two years ago from funds after votes passed a $126 million bond in 2002. Those funds can't be used to save programs, however.

Those fields will now sit empty unless the program can raise funds on its own to keep it going.

The college, which opened in Vallejo in 1945 and moved to its Fairfield location in the 1970s, serves about 20,000 students a year. It will now have just six athletic programs, but those too are at risk if the funds continue to shrink.

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