President’s Message – January 8, 2009

Dear Members of the University Community:

Welcome back to campus. I hope you had wonderful holidays and you enjoyed your well-deserved time off.

Like last year, 2009 promises to bring us many challenges and opportunities. I am proud of the way we managed our budget cuts and all we were able to accomplish together despite the deepest recession in university history.

I am particularly pleased that we were able to set aside funds to give a 2 percent pay increase to staff. Most of you should have seen this increase in your January 2 paycheck. Employees who joined the university between June 2007 and June 2008 will see the increase in their January 16 paycheck.

As we begin this year, Florida legislators are back in Tallahassee in a special legislative session to discuss a $2.4 billion budget shortfall for the current fiscal year. We are monitoring developments very closely. At the moment we believe that for us, additional cuts will be close to the 4 percent holdback Gov. Charlie Crist announced last fall. If that is the case, we have anticipated for such a reduction and will not need to make any additional cuts this year.

Of course, these reductions are for the current fiscal year (2008-09) only. Reductions for 2009-10 are expected during the regular 2009 session which begins in March.

Because of the importance and sensitivity of all matters related to our budget, I will be giving you weekly updates, just like I did last spring. It is my intention that these messages keep the entire university community fully informed and engaged as we face another challenging year in Tallahassee and on campus. Our leadership team is fully committed to tackling this year’s budget with the same transparency and participation from you, as we did last year. Please feel free to share your ideas and questions with me. I welcome your comments at presmail@fiu.edu.

I wish you a New Year filled with personal successes. I know that working together we will get through this difficult time as we have done in the past.

Modesto A. Maidique
President