Budget update: May 19, 2021

May 19, 2021

Tori Tragis

— by Dan White, chancellor

The Board of Regents (BoR) will hold a full board meeting Thursday, June 3, and Friday, June 4. Public testimony will be held on May 24 from 4-5 p.m. and the subcommittees will meet for Academic and Student Affairs, Facilities and Land Management, and Audit and Finance next week on Thursday and Friday, May 27 and 28. I encourage you to check out the BoR agenda and watch the livestream for any issues of interest to you. 

President Pitney will be providing a budget update to the BoR at the upcoming meeting. Normally the university would have our budget from the Legislature by now, and there would be a detailed discussion about the ramifications and implications of the state’s budget decisions. However, as in recent years, the budget is not yet complete and there is still much in the mix. In addition to the many moving parts in the state capital budget, there are other known and potential opportunities that will have significant budget implications related to federal COVID-19 funding directly to the university, federal funding for universities that will come through the governor’s office, as well as the new federal earmark process. I will share more details next week about the latest budget details.

Also at the board meeting, the UA System will be discussing revisions to the five 2017 UA BoR established goals and measures. The president’s objective is to refine the goals with benchmarks through 2025, updating metrics and measurements that will be further discussed and refined. As a bit of background, when the UA 2025 goals were set back in 2017, the university was in a very different position. We had gone through several years of budget reductions, but the three-year, $70 million compact was not yet a part of the scope. With the compact, we have reduced in many areas and grown in others. 

At UAF we are nearly finished with our own Strategic Plan. If you have not yet done so, please review the forums and provide input by May 31

Thank you for choosing UAF.