April 17, 2008

In our efforts to communicate the latest budget developments here and in Tallahassee in a timely manner, the university is disseminating weekly budget updates from President Modesto A. Maidique. These communiques are sent to our students, faculty and staff, alumni, donors, FIU Board of Trustees, Foundation Board of Directors, President's Council, select media, elected officials and other interested parties. We believe that timely information on a topic of such critical importance will benefit the entire university community and help to continue the university's forward momentum.
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In This Issue:

Town Hall meeting

Please note that anyone who missed this week’s Town Hall meeting may review the Power Point presentation at our dedicated budget web site

http://president.fiu.edu/budget_pres.html

Some of the most important points to remember from the Town Hall meeting include:

• Budget cuts will not be across the board, but rather tiered according to a set of priorities that has been shared and can be found in Monday’s presentation.
• Funding comes to FIU from a variety of sources for specific purposes. Often times it is not possible to transfer monies between funds. This explains why our construction projects are not affected by the current budget crisis.
• Our financial challenge is exclusive to the areas that are funded with E&G money, i.e. state funds.
• No decisions have been made. On Monday the senior vice president, provost and I, presented a series of recommendations. Plans will be forthcoming from deans and vice presidents next week. Final decisions will be made by our Board of Trustees after the Legislative session has ended and we have a better sense of our financial situation. Please mark your calendar now for our next Town Hall meeting scheduled for May 15 at 3 p.m. Additional timeline information can be found at the end of this message.

Update

Since our Town Hall meeting on Monday, a number of stories have appeared in the media that have contained varying degrees of accuracy. Our budget situation and the way we have chosen to address it are complicated and not easily understood in a news article. We should not realistically expect that media reports will capture every nuance and be completely accurate.

Because accurate information is critical at a time like this, we have chosen to create a weekly update so that everyone in the university community has an opportunity to hear the most updated and accurate information directly from me. I suggest that you continue to carefully read this weekly update until this process is finalized in June. I also ask all supervisors, including deans, to please make sure that all your direct reports and employees have access to this weekly update so that everyone is receiving and able to read the same information. This will assist us in mitigating the rumor mill.

I am sorry to say that some lay offs took place this week though I’d like to stress that they are not directly related to this budget process. Some months ago, with the resignation of Dean Ray Thomlison we decided to reorganize the College of Social Work, Justice and Public Affairs. Now that the dean’s office has been dissolved, six of our colleagues have been given notice and have been provided support from Human Resources to find other jobs.

At this time, however, it is impossible to say how many lay offs we will have to make. If all the cuts had to be taken by lay offs alone, we would be losing about 200 jobs. But that is not our intention as it was clearly stated at Monday's Town Hall meeting. Currently, we have about 200 vacant positions. Significant cuts will be achieved by deferring hiring for most of these open positions.

While we do believe there may be more lay offs because of departmental reorganizations and closings, it is impossible to know the exact number at this time. Proposals have not been received and evaluated, and our Board of Trustees has not made final decisions.

Our employees are one of our biggest assets. We care very much about your well-being and are making every effort to protect your jobs, especially because we understand the current economic situation that not only South Florida and the state are going through, but also the nation.

We have received numerous inquiries from a handful of specific areas of the university where I understand there is significant concern among faculty, staff and students:

Centers and Institutes

Page 13 of the Power Point presentation http://president.fiu.edu/docs/Townhall_Presentation.pdf clearly lays out a plan under which different centers and institutes will either be closed or given an opportunity to develop alternative funding sources over the next year. We simply cannot afford to continue funding our centers and institutes at the current level using state dollars. It does not mean that the work being performed is not important. It simply means that E&G dollars are not available to support it. Grants and other funds must be tapped.

SJMC, Education, Engineering, Architecture

Deans in these areas are working on plans to address target reductions. There is no plan at this time to close any of these programs. Likely, there will be significant evolution in all of these areas. However, it is important to note that we will support all our current students as they complete their degree programs.

Mailroom

We have issued a request for proposal (RFP) for a corporate partner who can help us perform certain functions at a savings as well as provide access to investment dollars for the operation we simply cannot expect to find in our regular sources of funding in the foreseeable future. We believe that by bundling mailroom, copying and printing we will be able to attract a large company with capital to invest in our infrastructure. There are two important things to remember about this RFP: 1) If a company does not come forward with an advantageous proposal, we will not make a change. 2) If we do find the appropriate partner, we are insisting that they must interview our current employees in those areas, before looking elsewhere. While we cannot ultimately require that they hire our employees, we certainly can guarantee that they will be interviewed. We expect that these will be good jobs with all the benefits associated with a large company. In addition, Senior Vice President Vivian Sanchez has scheduled a meeting with mailroom employees next week to address their concerns and answer their questions directly.

Construction Management and Real Estate Development

These departments also are in the category targeted for more than a 65 percent reduction in budget (refer to Power Point presentation, page 19). This does not mean that these jobs will disappear or that the university will stop construction projects. That would be impossible given the number of construction projects we have underway and on the drawing board. What it means is that we are going to eliminate E&G funding from these areas and instead fund them with the actual construction money: PECO, bonds, CITF.

Moving forward

I’m pleased to report that a USPS representative has been added to the Budget Stabilization Task Force. This recommendation came out of a meeting Senior Vice President Sanchez had with USPS employees last week.

Our executive team continues to put all of our energy into coming up with the most creative solutions to the challenges we face. Meanwhile, as the budget conference gets underway in Tallahassee, our government relations team continues to assiduously work the issues so that we may sustain the least damage possible.

Thank you for your continued support and understanding. I am committed to keeping you informed, so please encourage your colleagues to rely on this channel of communication for the latest developments related to our budget crisis.

I invite you to continue sending in your questions and concerns to me at presmail@fiu.edu so that we can continue open communication.

Timeline

Links of interest

FIU Governmental Relations page
http://government.fiu.edu/default.asp

New budget crisis web site
http://www.fiu.edu/pres/budgetcrisis