President announces range of budget options
MEMORANDUM
TO: Faculty, Students and Staff
FROM: President Bernie Machen
RE: Budget
On Wednesday, I was in Tallahassee meeting again with legislators about the state budget and the cuts UF will experience. It is clear that we are facing a very unique situation due to the state of the economy and the reliance upon one-time federal stimulus dollars. The Legislature plans to make very large cuts in our base funding which covers recurring costs such as salaries and operating expenses. They intend to use federal stimulus dollars over the next 2 years to make up for cuts to our base.
While this appears to be a good solution, it is only a temporary fix. This practice of using non-recurring funds to pay for recurring costs puts us in a very dangerous situation in the future. Two years from now, our base state funding will be millions of dollars less than it is today, and there will be no stimulus dollars to make up the difference.
The result could be a financial crisis. It is for this reason we must consider a budget plan to take us through, not just the next year, but through the next three years. And I have concluded we cannot use stimulus dollars for recurring expenses.
With that in mind, we have posted online a wide range of budget reduction options that will be considered when putting together the final budget for UF. The savings associated with the 10 percent reduction proposals which I asked all units to prepare, amounts to more than $73 million. Additional university-wide proposals are also included with potential savings of an additional $35 million.
There is a link to the budget proposals on UF’s home page, or you can find them at http://budget.president.ufl.edu/.
I cannot emphasize enough the preliminary nature of these proposals. These are options to consider. We do not know how many we will adopt.
We will not know how much we need to cut our budget until the Legislature finishes its work on May 1. As of today, the House cut to our base is approximately $90 million, and the Senate cut is $30 million. This is after providing $20 million in new tuition revenues.
We will look at how each of these budget reduction proposals affects our ability to provide a quality education as well as their short- and long-term fiscal impacts on the university. These decisions will be difficult – and extremely painful. We expect to finalize our budget recommendations and present them to the Board of Trustees by late May.
We remain vigilant in our efforts with lawmakers in Tallahassee, and I appreciate your patience during this period of uncertainty.
Please send your questions and comments to president@ufl.edu.