Using a longer lens, if the bellows are long enough, will give you more space between lens and baseboard but it won't change the exposure time more than the innacuracy between marked apertures on the lens. You are still squirting the same amount of light, through the same neg, on to the same area of paper.
If the head is a condenser based one, using a single PH-style (ie. normal shape but better quality filament position and white coating), then replace it with a lower wattage bulb - for example 75W instead of 150W. Also possible would be neutral density in the filter drawer, even a piece of white writing paper would work as a temporary filter, or a couple of offcuts of diffusion scrim.
If the head is a modern-ish colour head there should/could be a negative-density wheel in addition to CMY, possibly marked 'K' or 'D'. This was indeed because people often make small colour prints and RA4 paper is generally faster than black-and-white paper, which makes the short exposure-time problem more tricky.