Campus Resources and Planning Committee

December 10, 2010

Present: Bart Finzel, Maddy Maxeiner, Mark Privratsky, Dave Aronson, LeAnn Dean,

Sara Haugen, Andy Sharpe, Jacquie Johnson, Margaret Kuchenreuther,

Martin Seggelke, Josh Preston, Sydney Sweep, Carol Marxen

Guests: Colleen Miller, Pareena Lawrence, Jim Hall, Sandy Olson-Loy

Bart announced meeting time for spring semester: Friday at 10:30 a.m. beginning on January 28. Location will be Behmler Conference Room

Agenda for today is to continue the conversation from last week regarding our budget process.

Colleen invited questions from committee members about the budget process and identified the assumptions being made as we build a preliminary budget that will be presented at the Compact/Budget meeting in March.

Last year we had increases in central scholarship programs and increased costs in cost allocation pools. These need to be budgeted for this year. In addition, we will need to plan for reductions in O & M dollars. If we are told to expect a 3% cut, that amounts to $1M. If we are told to expect a 5% cut, that amount is $1.7M. It is possible the cut could be higher.

Martin wondered if the coordinate campus chancellors could ask for a special status compared to other colleges within the University system with the hopes that would be taken into consideration when it comes to budgeting.

Colleen said we are already given special consideration. As an example, on the cost pool allocation worksheet, there are 11 different cost pools and UMM does not participate in all of them.

Jacquie asked if Martin was asking for a united front? She believes the St. Paul colleges and campus see themselves very different from the Twin Cities campus. She added that the Chancellors meet monthly with Robert Jones and President Bruininks before the Board of Regents meetings and have discussed the interesting structure we have within the University of Minnesota system. A system-wide committee has been established to address some of these concerns and issues. We are not considered autonomous.

Colleen explained the high-level campus modeling report that was distributed. She discussed the timeline for updating the information in the model. She said that early next semester she will update our projection of current revenue and expenses. When she does this, she must estimate our tuition for spring and has only six months of actual expenditures data. We will also have better payroll information in a few weeks. We will also receive our budget instructions in January. When given those instructions, we will know how much we will be directed to cut in O&M for budget planning purposes. Additionally, we will be told our tuition increase; will be given a compensation increase percentage to model; and centrally determined cost pool allocations.

Mark wondered if some of the $2M reserve could be used to offset some of the anticipated cuts.

Jacquie believes the reserve was set up to help us get through the next biennium, but that there are so many things we simply don’t know at this time, e.g. utility costs and student enrollment numbers.

Bart said the committee had spent a lot of time last year trying to pin down the numbers in the “everything else” line and asked what is included on the revenue side and on the cost side. On the revenue side, Colleen said $700K is primarily internal sales and indirect cost recovery. Reimbursement of stimulus funds is also included. The cost side includes an enterprise assessment charge, PeopleSoft system, net transfer activity and capital expenditures. HEAPR is not included.

Mark asked about the financial impact of the greater number of students this year than budgeted for. Where does the extra money go? Colleen said she has a tracking sheet and guesses we are about $700K ahead of where we budgeted but there are so many uncertainties terms of what spring will bring that she doesn’t know if $700K is available to use for something else. Jacquie added that the surplus exists because we budgeted conservatively: it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think we would have some additional revenue.

Colleen added that when we submit our numbers for FY12 tuition, U fee and ICR, we get locked into those numbers. The Twin Cities budget office will hold us accountable for those numbers.