On Oct. 29 UND held a discussion on the current budget situation it will face for the fiscal year of 2016. The meeting was led by Alice Brekke, the Vice President for Finance and Operations. Among the audience were several UND faculty members and members of student government.  

“Depending on what strategies to fix the issue in ‘16, we may have to take further action in ‘17,” said Brekke. “If we use one-time dollars that are available in ‘16 to cover a cost, when we get to ‘17 the gap is still there, because our base rate of spending is still not equivalent to the revenue we are projected to generate.”

UND’s budget formulas recognize that the state pays a share of the budget and revenue brought in from tuition.  UND submitted to the state with a budget with a $4.7 million gap, this was due to revenue being lower that the projected expenditures. The state legislature capped tuition increases at 2.5 percent last session. UND’s collection from students from tuition was a total of $600,000 this past year. 

During the last legislative session there was one concern brought up regarding differed maintenance and ongoing facility maintenance. Each biennium UND generally counts on $4.4 million dollars for extraordinary repairs. These are repairs mainly to academic and campus facilities. 

“The legislature appropriated that $4.4 million, and then they put a string to it that said for every dollar we spend from that pool, we have to find two more dollars from within our own institutional resources. By requiring a match, it expands the number of dollars the 11 institutions in the state are
using. It impacts how much we are investing in an ongoing basis in our facility maintenance and up keep, which hopefully will begin decrease the differed maintenance” Brekke said.

UND is looking into identifying and leveraging dollars which will cause UND to work within its resources. UND doesn’t have borrowing authority as an institution. The only borrowing authority UND has is if the legislature takes specific action. If this happens, it only can be used on a specific transaction.   

By November 20th UND is planning on finalizing decisions on the 2016 fiscal year bridge funding. The next thing to take action on is to finalize decisions on recommendations on the budget for the 2017 fiscal year.

Tony Watson is a news writer for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected]