Regents schedule special meeting to discuss budget

Friday, Dec. 28, 2007 | 7:37 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - The Board of Regents will hold a special meeting Jan. 7 in Las Vegas to discuss how to meet budget reductions ordered by Gov. Jim Gibbons.

Backup materials provided for the meeting show that the university system still is looking at across the board cuts of 4.5 percent.

Using that percentage, Western Nevada College would lose $1.89 million and the University of Nevada, Reno $18.6 million over the biennium.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas would have to cut budgets more than $18 million, Great Basin College $1.4 million and Truckee Meadows Community College $3.65 million.

Altogether, the total the system must cut is $57.6 million.

"One thing the board has made clear through the chair is nothing's off the table," said Executive Vice Chancellor Dan Klaich.

Klaich said the issue of whether the smaller campuses - Western Nevada College and Great Basin College - are less able to absorb cuts than the big campuses has been raised and will probably be part of the discussion Jan. 7 as well.

"But I'm not really prepared to say at this point that one institution's pain is greater or less than another," he said.

The options include a temporary suspension of the board's policy on the use of Capital Improvement Fee funds generated by student fees. Those fees were supported by students to help pay for specific projects such as the student union building at UNR. They are levied as a per-credit charge on the student body.

Under the proposal before regents, the rules would be changed to allow the money to be used to cover reductions in operating budgets.

Klaich said the portion earmarked to help pay off the student union and the amount going to the fire service academy in Carlin cannot be touched.

Regent Steve Sisolak said he was concerned by that proposal because maintenance projects eventually will have to be financed.

The agenda says merit funding may be surrendered as part of the plan. The merit pool is provided by the Legislature at an overall rate of 2.5 percent of salary funding. It is used to provide raises to teaching faculty for exceptional performance.

Other items on the table include money appropriated for one-shot projects and capital improvement funding.

The special meeting will be held on the UNLV campus.

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Information from: Reno Gazette-Journal, http://www.rgj.com