More than 70 attend WWU's May 18 budget forum

A turnout of more than 70 Western Washington University faculty, staff, students and community members showed up to listen to and make comments regarding Western's 2010-2011 operating budget during a public forum on May 18.

"This isn't a president's budget or a vice president's budget," said WWU president Bruce Shepard in addressing the crowd. "This is your budget as well as ours."

Shepard fielded questions and offered a brief history of the budget to date. He said that WWU officials are looking at the current budget crisis as a three-year problem rather than something longer-term, based on the state's record of funding higher education.

"We are the rainy day fund for the state," Shepard said, "but when it stops raining, Washington state does put money back into investing in its people."

The 2010-11 budget proposal includes a roughly $3-million reduction in state funding, Shepard said. These cuts are on top of the $9.5 million in cuts for the year that were part of the initial 2009-11 budget passed last year. The 2010-11 budget also includes roughly $1.3 million in reallocations to fund high priority programs at WWU, Shepard said. Text of the proposed 2010-11 budget is available online at http://www.wwu.edu/upb/ or via the link below.

In response to a question about the state's demand that Western trim $1.2 million from its budget by making cuts related to personnel (commonly known as the "furlough bill"), Shepard said that the university should receive a little more direction from the state Office of Financial Management near the beginning of next week. Western will prepare a plan for meeting those budget reductions by late June. The university will be asking for a credit of the $300,000-or-so that faculty members saved last year by delaying merit-based pay increases that were included in their contract. Shepard said that state legislators were impressed by that move from the faculty.

Comments are being taken on the proposed budget until May 25. To submit comments, visit the Viking Village budget forum at http://forum.wwu.edu/node/13634.

The proposed budget will be mailed to the WWU Board of Trustees on June 1, and the board is scheduled to vote on the proposal at its meetings June 10 and 11 on campus. The timeline for the 2010-11 budget, as well as for the 2011-13 budget request, is available at http://www.wwu.edu/upb/opbudreqcal/bud_cal.pdf or via the link below.

Audio from the May 18 open forum is online at http://media.wce.wwu.edu/upb/051810.MP3.