Chief Financial Officer Robert Kasdin discussed the strength and allocation priorities of the University budget at yesterday's meeting of the Senate Assembly, the faculty's governing body.
"The finances of the University are quite healthy," Kasdin said. "We are in a strong financial position, but it would be foolish to suspend our diligence."
Kasdin set forth general priorities before addressing specifics about renovations that will be investigated in the University's ongoing Master Plan, University President Lee Bollinger's long-term campus construction and renovation initiative.
"We must ensure the one-time money is matched with one-time expenses, while recurring money must be applied to recurring expenses," Kasdin said.
He also emphasized the need to maintain a high level of service from the University's central administration.
Educational needs, Kasdin said, must surpass all other financing concerns.
"Over time, every dollar that can be spent on educational purposes must be redirected towards those pursuits," Kasdin said. "Last year, we focused on taking inventory of what facilities we had.
"This year is being dedicated to analyzing the relationship between North and Central Campus," he said.
A combination of renovations and new construction will alter the face of the University in the coming years, Kasdin said. The Frieze Building and Hill Auditorium will be two of the first buildings undergoing changes.
"The overwhelming majority of dollars will be spent on rehabilitating and re-using existing space, while the majority of the media attention will go to the new buildings," Kasdin said.
The University, Kasdin said, must handle the Ann Arbor's finite space resources with care.
"Every remaining plot must be allocated based on academic priorities," he said. "There is a limited amount of space remaining in the Ann Arbor community."
Dermatology Prof. Elizabeth Duell, a member of the Senate Assembly's Budget Study Committee, presented a final report of the committee's research.
Duell discussed the effects of the centralization of libraries and discontinuation of the mandatory retirement age on the University's budget.
"It's very difficult to really get clean data," she said.
The report expressed concern among the science faculty about the inconvenience of combining department libraries into one Science Library and concluded that the combination of resources had a negligible budgetary effect.
10-20-98
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