President Ham Shirvani letter on budget

From: President

Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 12:27 PM

To: AS President; Carolyn Stefanco; Dawn McCulley; Frank Borrelli; John Garcia; Paul O'Brien; Phillip Rojas; Steven Filling; Suzanne Green; Thomas McGhee; William Covino; Faculty-Staff

Subject: Response to UBAC 2009/10 Budget Recommendations and Open Forum on May 26

Dear Colleagues,

I want to thank and commend the University Budget Advisory Committee for completing the process that resulted in a series of recommendations to me for 2009/10 budget changes. Making budget recommendations in the best of times is not easy. Given the state of California, CSU and campus budget realities, I know this was an even more difficult task for everyone on the Committee to undertake.

Since receiving UBAC’s recommendations on April 17, I have spent considerable time consulting with various groups and individuals, and have received many emails in response to my April 21 request for input, which I also have considered in making my budget decisions.

As you all know, since receiving the UBAC recommendations the Chancellor’s Office has informed us that with the failure of the state ballot initiatives and the state’s continuing struggle to generate revenue to meet its budgeted revenue targets, the CSU will sustain substantial additional cuts in state funds for 2009/10. While additional cuts for 2009/10 were expected, the magnitude of the state’s financial problem has grown even more serious than originally anticipated. Be assured that I will aggressively seek CSU intervention on further budget cuts to our campus in the hope that we can significantly reduce additional cuts, although we may not be able to avoid them all together. We have only the most preliminary information now, which does not factor in a number of options available to the CSU. We expect to have more definitive information by early June. These dramatic changes in the fiscal environment also have weighed very heavily in my budget decisions for the coming year.

Enclosed are two documents that outline $6.2 million in initial base budget reductions that will be made for 2009/10. The first document is an overview, and the second provides more information about the cuts to each division. These cuts incorporate many of the reductions identified by UBAC, but do not follow them exactly. For example, after carefully considering the impact of the budget recommendations, some additional reductions in management positions have been made that were not identified by either UBAC or within the Division budget scenarios.

Any thought of deferring a portion of the $6.2 million budget gap to a future year is not possible, first, because we don’t have any one-time funds and also because we are expecting significant additional reductions. The magnitude of the current cuts varies among Divisions based upon factors which I believe reflect both operational and strategic priorities. The aggregate cut to Division resources is about 8.1%. We are cutting a substantial number of management positions as well as part-time and temporary lecturers and staff. I want to emphasize that there is no cut to permanent staff or faculty in this $6.2 million reduction. Affected managers have already been advised. It also is important to note that we have not made any base cuts this year, while many other campuses in the CSU did make base cuts.