MSSU in financial ‘recovery mode’

May 15, 2008 09:46 pm

— 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.
New approach
The proposed budget, Speck said, is highlighted by what is not in it. The budget won’t have any deferred maintenance or numbers based on enrollment increases.
“The way we did the budget in the past didn’t reflect the actual things to take care of,” Speck said. “This year, our budgeting staff has given us real numbers. There’s not a lot of leeway.”
The budget assumes that enrollment will stay the same. In previous years, increases in enrollment were predicted.
University departments will held more accountable for staying in budget, Speck said.
“We can’t take the perspective of, ‘If we need it, we have to have it,’” he said. “That’s not going to fly. We all have to stay within budget.”
Many departments have gone over their budget allotments for the current fiscal year, Speck said. Those numbers were not available as of Wednesday, but Speck said part of the reason for the overages was increased gas prices.
Douglas said Speck’s attention to the university’s financial condition is one of the reasons he was hired early this year. During an interview, Speck was given a chance to ask questions of the board. The first thing Speck asked about, Douglas said, was the amount of overspending on the budget.
“He said the budget has a lot of parentheses that have to be dealt with,” Douglas said. “We knew about it, but him bringing it up on his own was important.”

Stadium money

State Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, said the Legislature is debating a bill that would allocate $2 million toward the construction of a locker room at Fred G. Hughes Stadium that also could be used as a storm shelter.
“There was some criticism of the bill on the House floor, and some good-natured ribbing in the Senate,” Nodler said. “But because of the recent tornadoes, storm shelters are no longer a laughing matter.”