UF will lay off 58 people and close four programs under its final budget cut plan, which was released Friday.
The university will have to cut $42.2 million from its budget in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. The plan, however, only specifies how $30.6 million in cuts will be made, leaving almost $12 million in cuts up in the air.
Under the plan, nine faculty and 49 staff are slated to lose their jobs and an additional 150 positions will be eliminated. The eliminated positions include vacant positions from retirements as well as positions held by temporary employees whose contracts will not be renewed next year.
Five of the nine faculty layoffs in the plan are from the College of Journalism and Communications. Twenty-three of the staff layoffs are from the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
UF President Bernie Machen said in an interview Friday that the programs chosen for elimination were ones that the four senior vice presidents - UF Provost Joe Glover, interim Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources Larry Arrington, Senior Vice President for Health Affairs Doug Barrett and interim Senior Vice President for Administration Brian Beach - decided would have "the least impact on the overall mission of the university" if they were cut. Machen said the number of layoffs may be fewer by the time the new budget is implemented.
Though the Board of Trustees, UF's highest governing body, will make the final vote on the plan today, Machen said he can continue to consider alternate plans, as long as they are for the same dollar amount, for up to 30 days after the vote.
Faced with the reality of layoffs, Machen said some administrators may change their minds.
"It's one thing to send me a list of possibilities," Machen said of the budget cut proposals submitted by each unit at UF, "then when I call 'em up and say, 'We're gonna do this,' they say, 'Wait a minute, maybe I'll do something else.'"
The same thing happened last year, he said.
UF's budget plan last year called for 14 faculty and 118 staff layoffs. In the end, only eight faculty and 66 staff were laid off. Three faculty were later reinstated and two others were laid off in their place.
The reduction in layoffs was also influenced by unexpected retirements, new funding for some positions and the hiring of some soon-to-be-laid-off employees in other areas at UF.
In the plan released Friday, UF announced it will cut $30.6 million primarily by laying people off, eliminating positions and switching programs from state to non-state funding.
Most of the remaining $11.6 million in cuts have yet to be determined and will be covered by stimulus money - UF is receiving $41 million next year - in the meantime.
However, he said about $2 million will likely be cut by diverting money that UF's National Merit Scholars program was scheduled to contribute to the Grad Alumni program. As for the rest of the cuts, he said administrators are still analyzing various possibilities and determining how much they could save.
For example, he said UF is considering placing a cap on the amount of money employees can collect from unused sick leave or vacation time when they leave UF and also creating an early retirement program, which he said should be available by July 1.
But it's hard to know how much these measures will save, he said. For example, he said it is impossible to know how many people will sign up for the early retirement program, which would provide incentives for employees to retire early.
How UF will cut the remaining $3.6 million is even less clear. One proposal calls for consolidating some of the university's communication offices.
In addition to these cuts, UF might have to take even more from its budget during the middle of the year to pay for raises for some employees. UF will likely spend about $2.3 million, Machen said, to cover merit-based and promotion-related raises for faculty, which have not been factored into the budget yet. UF is not currently planning on offering across-the-board raises for faculty and staff.
There is also the possibility of another mid-year budget cut from the Florida Legislature, which is a big reason Machen has decided not to allocate all of UF's stimulus money. Only $24 million of the $41 million has been designated. Another reason for holding off on using stimulus money, Machen has said, is that the federal government hasn't explained yet how the stimulus money must be spent.
Machen said when it's time to decide how to cut the $11.6 million or more that still has to come out of UF's budget, he will present the options to the university community for feedback before making any decisions.
"We will start the process over again," he said.
This will likely happen around the middle of the next academic year, he said.
He also emphasized that UF will create a new list of possibilities for the next round of cuts instead of using the budget cut proposals submitted to UF in April.
"The list that was used to produce these cuts is now off the table," he said.
For now, though, the spotlight is on the Board of Trustees. They will vote on the budget in a telephone conference call today at 3:30 p.m. Members of the public who wish to listen can do so at 215C Emerson Alumni Hall.
Machen said the trustees are not likely to make any changes to the plan.
"My feedback from the trustees is that they're comfortable with what we've done," he said.
For the most part, he said, the trustees have let administrators determine how to make cuts.
"They have pretty much stayed out of the process until just about two weeks ago," he said Friday.
"They were very much involved in the lobbying of the (state) Legislature, so they knew exactly how bad it was, but they decided to let us decide," he said.
The trustees told Machen at their annual Lake Wauburg retreat in February that they wanted UF to shift its mission to focus more on graduate education and research. Machen said the restructuring envisioned by the board didn't occur.
"I think we pretty much preserved the university while shrinking it down to get this money out," he said.
He said it wasn't clear back in February how big UF's budget cut would be, which led some trustees to prepare for a worst-case scenario.
"In some people's minds, I think, was the idea of whole colleges being removed and all that," he said. "Certainly we didn't do anything like that."
Machen said he thinks the impact of the cuts on UF could've been much worse.
"I think we're intact," he said. "I think most of our colleges are gonna be okay. Our student body will not see their programs change."
He said he worries about two things, though-how UF will cut the remaining $11.6 million from its budget and about the slipping economy.
"My worry is… will there be another chapter to this thing?" he said.
