| Budget committee discusses two-year budget guidelines in town-hall meeting BY MATT GETTY The university budget committee presented its budget development guidelines to the campus community last week during the second town-hall meeting in the budget planning process for fiscal years 2008 and 2009. The guidelines were drafted following a town-hall meeting last October and approved by AU’s Board of Trustees in November. The guidelines will help the committee close an $8 to $12 million gap between budget requests and projected revenue for the next two years. Once that gap is closed, the committee will offer its balanced two-year budget to the AU board for its approval in February. “We’ve had a wide spectrum of input into the budget process,” said Don Myers, budget committee cochair and vice president of finance and treasurer. In addition to the input gained from the open campus forums, he noted, the budget committee itself includes faculty, staff, and students. According to the guidelines, increases in tuition and residence hall costs will range from 4.5 to 6.5 percent. Though 95 percent of budget revenue comes from student fees, said Myers and Ivy Broder, budget committee cochair and interim provost, AU is committed to keeping its costs in line with competitor institutions. The guidelines also note that freshman enrollment over the next two years will remain steady while transfer enrollment will decrease slightly. Among the budget priorities included in the guidelines are initiatives to increase international student enrollment, expand AU Abroad enrollment, and stabilize summer and graduate enrollment through “competitive pricing and aggressive marketing strategies.” As the budget committee crafts its balanced budget, the guidelines indicate that it will also place a premium on library acquisitions, the SIS and SOC construction projects, university marketing, development, and faculty and staff salary increases. The committee also recognized that external factors continue to impact budget planning. As in the past, the two-year budget must account for projected energy and health-care cost increases. Rising health-care prices increased benefit costs by roughly 8 percent in 2007, said Myers. “The national trend,” he explained, seems to be that it will continue to rise at that rate for the next two years. On the issue of energy prices, he was less certain of the projected rate but positive the budget needs to project for an increase. “At the time the ’06, ’07 budgets were built we were looking at $30 a barrel oil,” he said. “I think oil prices are now $55 a barrel. You tell me whether it’s going to be $45 or $85 by ’09. But at this point we definitely need to build an increase into our budget for that.” When asked whether the current $8 to $12 million gap between budget requests and projected revenue is normal for this stage in the budget planning process, both Broder and Myers assured the audience that it was. With a total budget in the range of $400 million, Myers explained, an $8 to $12 million gap at this stage is on a par with preliminary budgets from previous years. What’s different, the cochairs noted, is the inclusive and transparent process by which the committee now closes that gap. “The main difference is this time we’re talking about it more widely,” said Broder. Once the budget is finalized and approved by the board in February, the Office of Finance and Treasurer will distribute the detailed two-year budget to the campus community in early March. |
