{"id":25346,"date":"2013-11-14T17:19:45","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T22:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=25346"},"modified":"2013-11-14T17:19:45","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T22:19:45","slug":"town-halls-examine-brocks-budget-deficit-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2013\/11\/town-halls-examine-brocks-budget-deficit-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Town halls examine Brock’s budget deficit problem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brian<\/a>

Brian Hutchings, Vice-President of Finance and Administration, leads a town hall forum about the University's finances on Wednesday. . <\/p><\/div>\n

Several hundred members of the Brock community turned out at Sean O’Sullivan Theatre on Nov. 13 and 14 for a series of town hall forums organized to discuss the University’s fiscal environment.<\/p>\n

Led by Brian Hutchings, Vice-President of Finance and Administration, the sessions examined the need for Brock to get out of recurring deficits that have averaged about $6.5-million over the past five years.<\/p>\n

Hutchings said many Canadian campuses are keeping up with costs by admitting more students, but Brock – with enrolment now over 19,000 – is running out of classroom space.<\/p>\n

“Universities are hiding behind student growth,” he said, “but at Brock we can’t do that anymore.”<\/p>\n

Factors behind this year’s deficit include a $5.8-million pension shortfall, $4.8-million in operating costs and debt payment for the Cairns Complex, and $2.5-million needed for deferred maintenance across the University.<\/p>\n

Government funding cuts also took $2.5-million from revenues, including a cap on tuition and cuts to grants for operating costs and to help cover property taxes.<\/p>\n

In June, Brock’s Board of Trustees directed administration to reduce this year’s deficit from a forecast $14.5 million down to $7 million. Hutchings said they hope to find much of the short-term savings through six-month hiring delays for vacancies, encouraging staff to buy extra vacation time, reviewing positions for redundancies, and deferring non-essential equipment purchases. All money saved through unspent salary or benefits will go directly to deficit relief.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, if the current budget model were left unchanged, deficits would soar past $20-million, $26-million and $30-million respectively in the next three years. But Hutchings said that’s not an option, because the Board of Trustees has directed administration to balance the books by 2014-15.<\/p>\n

He implored the Brock community to work together to find structural changes that could save money or generate revenue and help get the University into sustainable financial health.<\/p>\n

Efforts have already begun toward restoring Brock to financial balance, including a program review that is currently underway. But Hutchings said that is only part of the answer.<\/p>\n

“The program review is not a silver bullet for the deficit problem.”<\/p>\n

Other change could come from value-for-money lean reviews, labour relations outcomes, new Development initiatives plus other undiscovered opportunities to develop alternate revenue sources.<\/p>\n

See the Brock University 2013-14 Budget Report in PDF <\/a>or flip-book format.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several hundred members of the Brock community turned out at Sean O’Sullivan Theatre on Nov. 13 and 14 for a series of Town Hall forums organized to discuss the University’s fiscal environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":25347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,1],"tags":[1318,1149,1145,576],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25348,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25346\/revisions\/25348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}