UM Curators meeting, including newest curators
The University of Missouri Board of Curators met Thursday for their annual meeting. The three new curators, as well as the student representative, were present.
In on of their afternoon sessions, the curators took a look at the future finances for the UM system. Vice President for Finance and CFO Brian Burnett went through a slideshow with the board about FY18. FY18 will start July 1, 2017. Vice President Burnett says the board has to vote on and present the budget ahead of time so the state legislature has time to look at it.
The Board of Curators will vote on this presented budget Friday.
The draft budget presented at Thursday’s meeting includes $464.9 million in core operations. The core operations include $10 million for the MU Medical School Expansion, $2 million for UMKC/MSU Pharmacy funding, and $1 million for the UMKC Satellite Dental Program at MSSU.
The draft budget also includes new requests. One of those new requests to legislature is to reinstate the $3.8 million the legislature cut the UM System Administration this year.
“Other Curator Programs Core and New Requests” and “Legislative Requirements Requests” were also included.
The total of the drafted FY18 is $515.6 million.
John Fougere, Chief Communications Officer for the University of Missouri System, said since the Missouri state legislature cut $3.8 million from the UM System Administration budget, the curators have been trying to make cuts that don’t affect the campuses.
“One thing we’ve tried to emphasize as we look for areas to find savings,” Fougere said, “is to make sure that the impact of those savings is not being passed on to the campuses.
Fougere said the savings for the UM System Administration budget will come from a combination of eliminated positions, not filling open positions, no merit increases or raises, as well as renegotiating contracts and curtailing some programs.
