University President Pat Long stressed four words during her address Wednesday at the University Cabinet meeting inside the Collins House: reduction, reallocation, redeployment and repositioning.

These four ‘r’s’ represent the pillars of the university’s plan to reduce a significant deficit that rolling projections indicate would total $384,958 at the end of this fiscal year.

The meeting was open to faculty members and representatives from the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Professional and Graduate Studies, the School of Education and the School of Nursing.

Following an opening that discussed and featured an exercise in key performance indicators, Long delved into the university’s budget issues.

“One of the things we know for sure is that over the years at Baker we have been living a life of not covering our own costs,” she said. “We haven’t had a revenue stream that matches our expenses. We’ve been overspending.”

The excessive expenditures in relation to the money being brought into the university have created the need for cutbacks. The university is knee-deep in an auditing phase in which a task force is evaluating all of Baker’s programs and any costly inefficiencies.

Having already laid off 30 non-faculty members last year, the question on the minds of those in attendance was whether more layoffs were to come.

While Long did not explicitly say more terminations are impending, she did not deem them impossible either.

"We are looking at all the options we have right now," she said. "So are we invoking that today? No. Will we invoke that? I'm waiting to see what the deans bring back to me and what the directors bring back to me."<br/>Long added that no matter the decisions made, the university will stay within the legal guidelines.Long added that no matter the decisions made, the university will stay within the legal guidelines.
Long added that no matter the decisions made, the university will stay within the legal guidelines.

The president and her cabinet said Nov. 1 is the date the university is aiming to finalize its financial proposal that would ensure the university would have a balanced budget by June 30.

According to the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Handbook, faculty members in their final year of tenure review must be notified if their contracts will not be renewed by Nov. 1. Second and third-year faculty members on track for tenure must be notified by Dec. 15, and first-year members must be alerted by Feb. 1.

Last year Baker accumulated $7 million in short-term debt, which is money devoted to covering everyday operational costs. The university was pleased to announce, however, that school-wide reductions from last year totaled $5 million. The terminations of the 30 non-faculty members, coupled with the university leaving open positions vacant, were the primary contributors in the savings, totaling $1.6 million.

“We still haven’t realized the full benefits of last year’s reductions,” Chief Operating Officer Susan Lindahl said.

The Board of Trustees is scheduled to meet Friday to continue assessing plans for the Baker budget.

Thebakerorange.com will have updates on this story as it develops. <br/>