CONNOR HOFFMAN
Staff Writer
On Monday, April 27, President Virginia Horvath presented the preliminary version of the 2015-2016 Fredonia budget at the annual President’s Budget Presentation in Rosch Recital Hall.
Horvath presented a PowerPoint outlining just exactly what is being changed and what the goals are for the next budget.
“You’ve probably noticed that the first slide had the word ‘forecast’ in it, and I had weather symbols in crystal balls — because in some ways, when we look forward on the budget, that’s what we’re doing,” said Horvath to the attendees. “We are looking at everything we know scientifically, the way meteorologists might to predict weather patterns, to predict the patterns of funding, and also to brace ourselves from the fact that you cannot predict, always, the kind of things that will happen in regard to the weather.”
The main goals for this budget are to “maintain most existing services for students, support student recruitment and retention for enrollment purposes and use retirements and staff changes by eliminating positions or reducing salaries in replacement hires.”
Horvath then went into detail about how the fixed costs — mainly salaries — continue to increase, and Fredonia’s allocations from SUNY remain relatively the same. She then pointed out what she saw as a growing gap with this deficit.
It was really emphasized that the university’s deficit last year was reduced by $1.18 million. She mentioned how, due to the cabinet and the University Senate’s fiscal conservatism, the university is on the right track to balancing the budget in the future, and not having to run deficits.
She then went through the budget and broke down what percentage each category takes up and just exactly what each category is.
Personal Service Regular (PSR) is probably the biggest part of the budget, taking up 74.17 percent of the budget, and this simply involves salary for continuing faculty. Temporary Service is 8.93 percent, and that’s for adjunct faculty and other temporary faculty members. Other than Personal Service (OTPS), the funds for equipment and material, is 11.5 percent, and Utilities is 5.4 percent.
The budget for the next year is $53,486,605, with a total revenue of $48,906,945 and a deficit of $4,579,660. The state support from SUNY is $13,185,900, and the revenue from tuition is $33,931,041.
The recurring campus support for programs such as year-end carryover funds, utility savings, fee support, FSA Utility Support, Residence Hall Utility Support, Summer Session and J-Term revenues totaled $1,790,000.
Students can expect to pay some increases in their annual fees to make up some of this deficit.
Tuition will increase from $6,170 to $6,470. Something to note with the tuition increase is that this does include the annual $300 increase that rational tuition requires, and that is controlled by SUNY, not Fredonia. Fees will increase from $1,570.50 to $1,607.
The residence hall fee for a double room is being increased from $7,200 to $7,600.
Also, the price of the meal plans will be going up. The meal plan Horvath used as an example was a meal plan of 10 meals per week and 600 points. Currently that meal plan costs $4,620, and is being increased to $4,750.
In order to offset some of these costs, the university has cut money in certain spots, with a total of $2 million in expenditure reductions.
One change was to budget vacant faculty and staff lines at entry level and this was reduced by $569,927. This means that when a staff member leaves and the position is vacant, or if a staff member is rehired, it will be at entry level, which is lower and has resulted in these savings.
Also, a stipend for a General Education coordinator resulted in saving $8,000. Instead of having this coordinator, the duties of this GenEd coordinator have been shifted to an administrator.
Another change being made is reducing the temporary service allocation by 3 percent. This temporary service is used for temporary faculty, such as adjuncts.
Also discussed was what is called soft savings, meaning that instead of cuts, savings are created by not spending the money or saving time, according to Businessdictonary.com.
The university is going to save $440,000 by holding some Full Time Equivalent (FTE) lines vacant. This means that they will hold some vacant full time job spots vacant for the year.
The university also hopes to save $517,975 through delayed hires, which means that administration will delay hiring for a job.
Readers should keep in mind that everything mentioned at this presentation was the proposed numbers and could change at any second. Horvath made sure to mention the numbers presented were just projections, and may even change by that afternoon.