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2005
Faculty and Staff CONVOCATION |
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THE BUDGET Let's start with the budget for the biennium we are now entering. Last spring, with your involvement, we prepared a budget based upon the Governor's proposed budget. We made the required $845,000 reductions. Then got cut, and cut some more. Every day brought more bad news. For UWGB, it went from $843,500 to $1M to $1.6M to a worst case scenario of $2.3M in cuts. And there was more. Some of those initial cuts in the Governor's budget were reallocations to support important budget additions. Legislative action to remove most of those additions turned reallocations into out-and-out cuts. Other legislative actions ranged from an additional cut directed at System administration and that will affect us, to imposing the academically questionable idea of requiring those who repeat courses to pay double the tuition, to mandating a retirement system contribution that would have meant a third straight year with, effectively, no salary increase for any of us. |
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I will spare you the details here, although they are on the Web. (http://www.uwgb.edu/chancellor/budget) When things were at their bleakest, I had the opportunity to address the Regents on your behalf, and I spoke of hurricanes. We pull together in the face of the first. The second and the third, though, create the challenge of holding a campus together not only fiscally but, perhaps more importantly, also emotionally. You have heard me say, over and over again, that when things look good, they never turn out that well. And, when things look bad, they never turn out that badly. We were in bad need of some good news. The good news came in the form of gubernatorial vetoes. Through those vetoes, the worst-case biennial $2.3M cut for UWGB became $1M. The mandated retirement contribution was vetoed. And a host of other unworkable ideas were also vetoed. |
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OF PAGE Office of the Chancellor, David A Cofrin Library, Suite 810, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, 2420 Nicolet Drive, Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 Phone: 920-465-2207 E-mail: shepardb@uwgb.edu Comments to: Chancellor's Web Manager Revised: 03/02/2006 |