July 7, 2003 Meeting of Administrative Council

Agenda not yet available.

Paula Kaufman, Chair, Rod Allen, Bob Burger, Bart Clark, Barbara Ford, Peggy Glatthaar, Barb Henigman, Lisa Hinchliffe, Bill Maher, Lyn Jones, Al Kagan, Cindy Kelly, Tom Kilton, Nancy O’Brien, Beth Sandore, Diane Schmidt, Paula Watson, John Weible, Greg Youngen

Budget Issues

Budget reduction from the state is almost $28M for campus unavoidables, which includes a 3% salary pool and it also includes Oak Street (remember the Provost is coming up with an additional $400,000) for that.

Cuts average 8% for academic units, and 10.5% for administrative units.  Our cut is 3.84%.  Every unit is to identify and set aside 3% in cash to give back should there be a mid-year call back.  This year we were exempted from giving back our 2% but that doesn’t mean it will happen again. We can’t avoid layoffs, if we have to identify cash up front to set aside, it would have to happen pretty quickly to get full value. (Note: the Provost subsequently reduced our requirement to 1%.)

Campus started out for us with a 6% reduction which is $1.8M.  The Provost allocated us $500,000 —1/2 million back, which made the net reduction $1, 300,000, which is 4.33%.  Campus allocations were $146, 600 positive for us, so the net cut was $1, 153, 400 which is 3.84%.  There is a 3% salary program for faculty, AP’s, and open range plus some equity money.

We have a fairly severe compression problem at the lower end of our faculty salary wages and we’v e asked for authority to use a little bit of our money, enough money to make a difference in those salaries so we can uncompress those salaries. We need to make a difference between the salaries we hire people at and the salaries for people who have been here a few years; right now those differences are very small.

Current thinking on student wages:

We do not have concrete figures yet. The base rate for student wage allocations will rise above $3000.

Once figures have come out, they will be sent to the list of those units who have requested schedule changes for the fall.  You will be asked, 1) if you want to keep it that way, or 2) modify or 3) other units who have not yet responded do they want to respond.  We have to get the fall schedule out by the end of July.

We haven’t finished figuring how much cash we can find ourselves.  The current estimate is 20 staff layoffs if we are required to do the 3% cash, and that will also includes taking some of the money out of the cash reserve money from collections. In addition to vacancies & calculations we will be looking at more serial cancellations.  Approximately $900,000 (5%) will have to be set aside.

We are trying to secure the operations budget (which has been funded in part by lapsed salary monies), but there is not a lot of salary money to fill in any of those lines.  The only places we have to take it from are personnel or collections.  Layoffs may have to happen immediately and will be by seniority.

Reassignments:

Bob will talk to each unit head who is having someone reassigned out of the unit starting this afternoon.  He will then talk to each unit head to whom a person is being assigned.   Bob will ask each unit head if they want to talk to the impacted staff alone or they want one of us to be there when they talk to the person who is going to be reassigned; we’l l also notify the union.  We will offer to help in training.  AULS will be happy to go and discuss this with units if they are wanted.

To determine reassignments, we looked at the minimum amount of staff that is needed to keep the doors open and running at a bare minimum level, if units were below what we identified as a minimum they will have a position filled through reassignment and the positions will come from units above the minimum.

No one will be moved into administration.

Nine people will be reassigned, transitions should be happening by August 1.  We tried to match people up with the department where they may fit best.   Job descriptions need to be rewritten for these positions. There is a job description for the position these people are leaving.  It is important to remember that these people are being reassigned, not laid off.   The person’s personal classification does not change, pay will not be affected.

The Arts and Humanities Division has raised the possibility of discontinuing pick-up and delivery services to its patrons. Other divisions disagree. The issue will be investigated and implications reported to AC for discussion in August.

We have already cut $225,000 within serials.  No matter what proposal is put on the table we need to continue to look at proposals and think how to deal with less.

Stress Management workshops:

7/29     —         9:30 – 11:30     Grainger

—         1:30 —   3:30    Grainger

7/30     —         9:30 – 11:30     Gregory Hall