By Joe Hadsall

jhadsall@joplinglobe.com

Belts will be tightened at Missouri Southern State University over the next fiscal year.

The Board of Governors will consider during its meeting today approving a $69 million budget that puts the university “in recovery mode,” said President Bruce Speck. The board will meet at 1 p.m. at Billingsly Student Center at MSSU.

Speck said no one’s job is on the line, but university departments will be asked to stick to their budgets and cut operating costs. The proposed amount is an increase over the current fiscal year’s budget of $64.4 million.

“We haven’t discussed cutting staff yet,” Speck said. “If there is a program we need to cut, then we will have to figure out what to do with the personnel.”

That proposal does not include pay raises for employees, said Terri Agee, senior vice president. The board will discuss whether to add salary increases, at a cost of about $300,000 for every 1 percent raise.

Already, the university has trimmed spending. A faculty dinner has been changed to a luncheon. Other traditional expenses, such as customized gifts for retirees and refreshments at graduation, have been replaced with cheaper alternatives.

The university is working to stop funding some scholarships, which account for about 25 percent of the budget, Speck said. He seeks to replace about $5 million in scholarships with private funding over the next few years. The first year’s goal is about $50,000.

The budget also calls for spending about $2.3 million to $2.9 million out of reserves, depending on what the board approves.

Board chairman Dwight Douglas said he would like to see the university get away from using reserves every year.

“The message to the university community is that we have to grow out of what is a deficit budget,” Douglas said. “We have to look at what areas we can trim. I hope this is the last year for deficit spending.”

About $24.6 million of the budget will come from the state, said Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin. The amount includes a 7.2 percent increase in funding, the same increase that MSSU saw in the current fiscal year.

MSSU has received $13.5 million in additional funding over the past two years, in an attempt to make up for years of “historic underfunding,” Nodler said.

“Even with that extra funding, MSSU remains an underfunded institution,” he said.