UM Board of Curators approves $3.9 billion budget
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The University of Missouri Board of Curators unanimously passed a $3.9 billion budget for the coming fiscal year Thursday.
Ryan Rapp, executive vice president for finance and operations for the UM System, told curators the budget is meant to represent a "return to normal operations in the wake of the pandemic" now that all operating federal stimulus funding now expired.
About $1.6 billion in revenue is budgeted for the Columbia campus and MU Health Care is expected to generate close to $1.4 billion in revenue, according to documents prepared for the board meeting.
Health care represents about 40% of revenue and 47% of the operating costs are being used for salary and wages.
Curators Darryl Chatman and UM System President Mun Choi hold a news conference after the curators' open meeting.
The financial plan highlights the pressure that inflation has put on the university's budget. Inflation is at about 7-8%. The financial plan says inflation could linger and will require the UM System to "continue to find operating efficiencies." The university will have to increase prices at higher rates than the past, "unless state appropriations begin to outpace inflation," according to the financial plan. Operating revenue is expected to grow about 3% in the fiscal year starting July 1 -- well below current inflation levels..
The board also approved capital projects including additions to MU's Research Reactor and Roy Blunt NextGen Precision Health Building and renovations to the Pershing Commons and MU Lottes Health Science Library.
MURR will receive an approximately 40,000-square-foot addition. The three-story addition will be added to the existing MURR North building and will cost $20 million. The project will expand the facility's multidisciplinary research and testing laboratories.
Earlier this year the MU's Research Reactor became the only producer of three radioisotopes that are used for medical diagnostics and the treatment of cancer and other diseases after a European reactor unexpectedly shut down.
The Roy Blunt NextGen Precision Health Building will add a fourth floor to the building that opened in October. The project will add about 18,200 square feet of research laboratory space to the building and is expected to cost $16.5 million. The fourth floor will be home to NextGen's neuroscience and reproductive biology researchers. The expansion is expected to be completed in fall 2024.
The MU Board of Curators also heard a proposal to revamp its leave program and change the number of days off available to employees.
The curators will consider the plan at their September meeting and would take effect in 2024.
