Dozens of City College of San Francisco students and faculty traveled across town Thursday and packed a Chinatown campus meeting room where the trustees’ budget committee was to hear their objections to double-digit executive raises amid class cuts and faculty reductions.

Two trustees showed up: the committee chairwoman, Ivy Lee, and the alternate member, John Rizzo.

But two was a quorum on the three-member committee, so the meeting proceeded. It’s not clear where the third member was, or why two chairs were reserved for trustees who don’t serve on the committee.

The mix-ups — including an initial seating arrangement in which Lee and Rizzo had their backs to the audience — capped an equally confusing week at City College in which administrators claimed, at first, that the executive raises had been approved in August. Then, after admonishing faculty and students for protesting, Chancellor Mark Rocha said the raises required additional trustee approval and amounted to a proposal he will put forth to the full Board of Trustees next week.

But on Thursday, the story changed again, as Rocha acknowledged that the trustees in fact had approved the new salaries in August as part of the 2019-20 annual budget. However, he said, “The board can rescind that.”

“Many times I have shot myself in the foot. This is a case ... in which I tried to shoot my foot clean off,” Rocha told Lee, Rizzo and the standing-room-only crowd, as he made his case for the raises. There is never a good time to propose a salary increase, Rocha said. “However, this is the best time.”

He said 19 administrators either quit or were laid off in the past year, and that competitive salaries were needed to attract replacements.

Rocha told the crowd that the total cost of the executive raises would be no more than $580,000 a year — 10% of the $5.7 million in raises City College expects to hand out to all employees this year.

His proposal comes as City College has wrestled to the ground a $32 million budget gap in the general fund. It’s offering 10% fewer classes this fall than last — a reduction of 242 classes in a range of subjects, including computer science and LGBT studies. The school also eliminated counselors for international students, among other reductions of counselors, faculty and staff.

Yet the size of the individual raises Rocha is proposing remained unclear Thursday because his chart compared 2018 gross salaries for each employee against what their base pay would be.

Faculty leaders — who hadn’t known about the raises until a colleague found them recently on page 95 of the budget — offered a clearer comparison, matching up base salary levels for executive jobs in 2018 against the new base salaries proposed for the same jobs. They found, for example, that the base salary for vice chancellors at the low end would more than double, from $124,358, to $250,000. The base salary for the same job at the high end would rise 23%, from $210,895 to $260,000.

“We thought our math was wrong,” Jenny Worley, the faculty union president, told the crowd Thursday. “Nobody gets a $125,000 raise. Nobody gets a $50,000 raise. As my students would say, ‘That ain’t a thing!’”

Student Jewel Ross said she remembered Rocha telling city officials last spring that everyone at City College would have to make sacrifices during this bad budget year.

“In what universe is a raise a sacrifice?” Ross asked.

Instructor Constance Conner said waiting lists in computer science “are huge” because so many classes have been cut.

“You do this in San Francisco in the 21st century?” she asked, adding that she’s telling voters to oppose an upcoming bond measure for City College because of the executive raise issue.

Greg Keech said the English as a Second Language Department he chairs has lost 60% of its coordinators.

“We’re having a really hard time,” he said. “We’re crippled. And now there’s a big, fat raise.”

Most of the dozen or so speakers opposed the raises. But a handful favored them.

Clara Starr, the seventh highest-paid employee at $197,297, said administrators should get their due.

“I’ve watched us celebrate when other employment groups get a raise,” said Starr, associate vice chancellor for human resources. “I’ve never seen other groups appreciate administrators getting a raise. ... If you really want to attract good administrators, you need to pay them.”

Two people applauded.

In the end, Lee, the budget committee chair, moved to recommend that before considering the chancellor’s salary proposal, the full Board of Trustees hire an independent financial analyst to determine if it is “reasonable and fiscally feasible, and how our salaries compare with other institutions.”

Rizzo, the other trustee present, seconded Lee’s motion.

The measure passed unanimously.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov