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Over the past few months, you have received communications from Vice President Lopes, Provost Carbajal and Faye Gallant, Executive Director, Budget and Financial Planning, on Strategic Budgeting and developing priorities for our operating budget request for the 2023-2025 legislative session.  As we get towards the end of this process, I want to share my appreciation to you for your active engagement in strategic budgeting conversations over the past several months. I also want to summarize our takeaways and next steps in this process.

As you know, this year we started  with the goal to simplify the operating budget process and to better align it with our strategic priorities.  In this first year, there were 97 proposals from across the University in the focus areas of graduate education, inclusive student success, and core infrastructure, safety, and regulatory compliance.  We will propose to the Board of Trustees to move over 40 proposals forward for funding as part of our state budget request, internal reallocation, or alternative funding sources, though it should be noted that this does not guarantee immediate budget support for all those proposals or at the level at which support was requested.  The proposed budget packages for submission to the state are outlined in .  These proposals represent the exceptional efforts of our university community in serving our state and our students, and we want to thank you for your participation.  Strategic budgeting is a multi-year process, and we will work hard to provide funding for as many proposals as possible over the next few years.

Additionally, we will also be addressing two essential fiscal priorities for Western in FY2022-2023: base funding for Academic Affairs and the recurring university budget deficit.  We will address the funding gap in Academic Affairs that has existed for several years in this coming fiscal year.

The university budget deficit is a result of the precipitous drop in first-year enrollments in fall 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  We recovered some of that drop in fall 2021 and our fall 2022 projections are looking strong at this time.  However, the enrollment drop in fall 2020 will take a few years to work through the system, and we need to bring expenditures in line with revenues to avoid developing a structural budget deficit. To this effect, I have charged the Vice Presidents to work with their divisions on closing the gap between our recurring revenues and expenditures, beginning in fiscal year 2023. The full recommendation will be posted online at .

Finally, we have been thinking about establishing a standing university-wide budget committee to broaden the perspectives informing and advising our budgeting process and outcomes.  The work of such a committee is intended to complement the work of the UPRC, the Deans’ Council, the Space and Planning Committee, and other groups engaged in budget matters, while guiding the strategic budgeting process and ensuring follow-up on recommendations from university-wide advisory groups, such as the Structural Equity Team, on making these processes more equitable and inclusive.  We will share more about this idea over the next several weeks.

Thank you again for your interest and engagement in the budget process.  I encourage you to join us for a university-wide Strategic Budgeting Forum on May 18, from 1:45-3 p.m. in Fraser Hall 101, which will include discussion of the budget plan and the kickoff of the next proposal cycle.

Sabah Randhawa
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