{"id":166916,"date":"2016-07-07T10:52:36","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T16:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=166916"},"modified":"2016-07-08T13:06:19","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T19:06:19","slug":"wednesday-public-meeting-will-shed-light-on-nmsu-budget-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/07\/wednesday-public-meeting-will-shed-light-on-nmsu-budget-situation\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday public meeting will shed light on NMSU budget situation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hadley

Rachel Valerio \/ University Communications<\/p>

Hadley Hall, NMSU’s administration building on the main campus in Las Cruces.<\/p><\/div>\n

Employees and others anxious to learn what additional measures New Mexico State University may\u00a0take to address its budget shortfall will\u00a0get some answers on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Members of the NMSU Board of Regents are scheduled to hold a public\u00a0meeting Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.\u00a0in Yates Auditorium, located in Domenici Hall<\/a>\u00a0on the main campus in Las Cruces. While the agenda for the meeting hasn’t yet been released, university spokesman Justin Bannister confirmed that the meeting is “meant to let everybody know where we stand on the budget” and what additional cuts or other measures might be taken.<\/p>\n

The agenda will be posted at least 72 hours before the meeting\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yates Auditorium can hold 240 people, Bannister said. For those who can’t attend in person, the meeting will be webcast, according to the meeting notice<\/a>. You’ll be able to watch online\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Officials aren’t currently answering questions about what additional cuts the university may take to balance its budget.\u00a0The meeting agenda, when it’s released,\u00a0may\u00a0include details about what’s in store. The Regents will be able to give final approval on Wednesday to items that appear on the agenda.<\/p>\n

The university has been developing a plan to address a budget deficit in the current fiscal year caused by decreased state funding\u00a0and falling enrollment that was recently revised up from $10.7 million to $12.1 million. Bannister said the new estimate “provides us with some cushion should we need it over the course of the year” and could change depending on enrollment at NMSU for the Fall and Spring semesters.<\/p>\n

The Regents have already approved cuts to some employee benefits<\/a>, including reductions in annual and sick leave and health and other insurance. Chancellor Garrey Carruthers and many other high-ranking university employees have taken pay cuts<\/a> that are expected to save $190,000 a year.<\/p>\n

The Regents\u00a0rejected a proposed tuition increase<\/a> to help cover the shortfall in April.\u00a0So, clearly, additional measures are needed.\u00a0Eliminating the\u00a0Employee Health Center<\/a>\u00a0is among the possibilities that has been discussed.<\/p>\n

Before the current budget shortfall became clear, the university was already in the process of reorganizing<\/a> to cut costs in response to decreased state funding, increased costs of education, declining enrollment, and less federal funding for research. A study<\/a>\u00a0released in September found that NMSU’s staff was poorly organized<\/a> — with too many mid-level managers who were supervising too few employees.<\/p>\n

So NMSU was already headed toward employee changes\u00a0before the Legislature cut higher-education funding by an additional 2 percent earlier this year<\/a>. NMSU has been in some form of a hiring moratorium and considered filling jobs on a case-by-case basis since March 2015. Some\u00a0vacated jobs have already been fit into the university’s reorganization plan, Bannister confirmed.<\/p>\n

Will\u00a0the university speed up the reorganization\u00a0process to help with the immediate budget shortfall? University officials currently aren’t answering that question or others about whether there could be layoffs, reclassifications that result in lower salaries, or other major changes for staff.<\/p>\n

But those answers might come on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the university has been posting information about the budget online here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Employees and others anxious to learn what additional measures New Mexico State University may take to address its budget shortfall will get some answers on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":164113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[196,118,125,133,706],"class_list":["post-166916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-budget","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-nmsu","tag-transparency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}