UF will cut its budget by about $42 million and eliminate about 150 positions, UF President Bernie Machen told the Faculty Senate on Friday.
Seventy-two of those positions will be faculty, 80 will be staff, Machen said.
The cut will also include some layoffs, but he declined to say exactly how many.
After the meeting, he said there would be fewer than a dozen faculty layoffs and a "fair number of staff layoffs."
The $49-million figure, cited as the size of UF's budget cut last week by a UF spokeswoman, was based on incorrect information.
Machen said about $30.6 million of the $42 million will be saved by cutting vacant positions, reducing expenses and other eliminations. Of that, about $12 million to $13 million will come from eliminating vacant positions, and more than $6 million will be saved by switching programs from state funding to non-state funding, he said.
About $8 million will be saved by universitywide administrative cuts, like capping sick leave payouts and creating an early retirement program.
The remainder, about $3.6 million, will come from undetermined sources, he said.
More specifics about the cut will be released later this week, he said.
About $24 million in federal stimulus money will be used to plug some of the budget gap, but Machen maintained he will not use the money to cover cuts to recurring costs, like salaries, that must be paid every year. Instead, it will be used for transitional costs, like paying faculty salaries when they are in their notice period after being laid off.
It could also be used for energy-saving upgrades to buildings, he said after the meeting.
He said he has not allocated the entire $41 million that UF is expected to get this year from the stimulus package because he is still not sure exactly how it can be spent and because there is the possibility of another mid-year cut from the state Legislature, in which case he would like to have emergency money on hand.
He said he expects the federal government to release the details about how the stimulus money can be spent later this month.
A few senators questioned Machen's use of the stimulus money during Friday's meeting.
"I… thought that the stimulus money was specifically to avoid layoffs and was specifically for job creation," said Jane Brockmann, professor of biology. "It was to be used not to be set aside."
Machen told her it is a requirement that all of the stimulus money be used.
After the meeting, he said a few academic programs would be cut, accounting for about 2 percent of the total cut.
Although he said UF plans to allow all students in terminated programs to finish their degrees, those programs will stop taking new students.
