In response to the State’s budget shortfall, Governor Pawlenty “unallotted” or took back $20 million dollars from the U’s budget for this fiscal year (which ends June 30). President Bruininks then had to cut that amount from the various U programs. FM’s share was $600,000. While that was significant it could have been worse. Remember FM receives money from two sources, the U’s budget for supported services (those paid as part of our annual budget through the cost pools) and revenue from the non-supported services we provide (e.g. services to auxiliaries like housing, and special requests from any unit which they are billed for).
Our budget picture this year continues to change, but we know that we will have to make significant changes in order to manage the share of the budget shortfall that FM is asked to manage. So, while we won’t know what our final budget will be for some time, we are moving ahead with plans to respond to both supported and non-supported shortfalls. Below are some of these plans.
Custodial Pilot Project – Supported Services
The U gives FM a fixed budget to provide support services like custodial for portions of the campus. Of the space our custodial staff cleans, fully 25% is private offices and 16% is labs. With fewer resources, we need to reduce services. We feel that we can better serve the University by reducing time spent on ‘private spaces’ like offices and labs while maintaining or even increasing time spent to clean high impact public spaces such as entrances, classrooms, hallways and bathrooms.
We will be running a custodial pilot project from February 1 until March 31 in the following buildings: Donhowe, Mondale Hall, MCB and Moos Tower floors 6-9.
During the pilot we will:
* Reduce office trash and cleaning from five days to one day service per week
* Reduce research lab trash and cleaning from five days to three day
service per week
With the help of pilot-area customers and staff, we will evaluate the pilot’s effectiveness and develop our tactics accordingly. We fully expect a successful pilot, as the University of Minnesota is the only school in the Big Ten that currently provides 5-day a week service in these areas.
If the project goes as well as we anticipate our next steps would be to expand the program campus-wide. This would likely trigger:
* Re-bidding the entire Twin Cities campus
* Modifying the Maroon Standards and creating a new baseline
* Reducing staff levels (through attrition wherever possible)
* Developing new Service Level Agreements (SLA’s)
Before doing a campus-wide implementation, we will work with Teamster leadership and share any plan revisions with staff and customers.
FM Service – Non-supported services
While FM receives a budget from the U to provide support services, we also generate revenue by selling non-supported services (like painting or small renovations) to colleges and departments.
As the financial picture has worsened, colleges and departments have stopped or postponed doing projects. They are saving resources until they know exactly what their future budget will be. This slowdown in our work load is hitting FM Service especially hard. FM Service stays in business by charging customers like colleges and departments for the work it performs. With fewer jobs coming in, FM Service must reduce its staff.
We have been using our FM Service workforce to complete projects within our own districts as a means of keeping people employed while we watched if the downward trend would continue. This can only work for a short time because when FM Service does work for the districts, the districts are charged for it and they don’t have the budgets to cover this cost. We have been reducing and will need to continue to reduce the size of FM Service until we balance staff with available and requested work.
A few dates that will be important in the budget development:
• End of January: Governor releases first version of his budget
• Early February: University gives FM revised budget targets
• Early March: State publishes new financial forecast
• Later March: Governor releases adjustments to his budget
• Later March/April: University decides if it needs to alter its budget
• May: Legislature and Governor agree on state budget for next two years.
• May/June: Board of Regents adopts University budget for next year
These are difficult choices that we do not make lightly. I have communicated with the Teamster leadership, Trades Business Agents and Vice President O’Brien to make sure all are aware of the situation. As more information becomes available, we will share it with you.
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