CSULB gets largest budget in its history

By Alison Young, On-Line Forty-Niner

Monday, September 28, 1998

Partly due to California's booming economy and low unemployment, Cal State Long Beach was allotted approximately $166 million from the state, which includes student fees, for its 1998-99 budget, 12 percent over last year's budget of $140 million. This is the largest the university has received to date, President Robert Maxson said.

In addition to the $166 million from the state, CSULB is budgeted to receive $47 million in private fund raising, primarily gifts and donations and $40 million in grants, mainly from the federal government for research purposes, totaling $253 million.

Even though continued growth at the California State University system is uncertain, for now times are steady, with a final CSU budget of approximately $2.1 billion, $284 million or 15 percent over last year's budget.

Maxson has released a general fund support budget, which details the allotment of the additional $20 million CSULB received.

Approximately $9 million of the $20 million is earmarked for specific expenditures and will be used for permanent reoccurring authorizations.

The allotment of the additional $11 million, which Maxson notes is primarily one-time nonrecurring authorizations, is based on requests from different departments on campus.

This does not include the issue of teacher salary increases, which is decided by the CSU, Maxson said.

Ongoing negotiations between the CSU and the California Faculty Association will determine the final salaries.

To accommodate the 1998-99 assigned enrollment target of 20,434 full-time equivalent students, the largest allotment from the $11 million, $3 million, will go to faculty resources, which facilitates additional faculty positions to accommodate student course and instructional needs. $1.7 million of that will go to full-time faculty as a permanent base-budget adjustment. The remaining $1.3 million will go to part-time faculty, who may or may not be re-hired, as a nonrecurring allocation, Maxson said.

The second largest disbursement of $2.1 million will go toward technology support on campus. Maxson said this is to keep the campus current. Funds will primarily be used for faculty workstations, updating current computers and purchasing new ones.

In other budget action, Disabled Student Services will receive $55,000 for in-class support services for hearing-impaired students on top of its reoccurring allocation of $50,000.

Publishers of Review will receive a nonrecurring allocation of $90,000 to continue the publication, a newsletter for alumni, parents and donors.

"Review is an important public relations document with a circulation of 150,000," Maxson said. It is published once a semester.

Student services will receive $70,000 for the upkeep of self-service options for students, such as Kiosk and student counseling, Maxson said.

In addition to each colleges travel budget, faculty will receive $100,000 to meet unexpected travel needs.

"This will be used for individual departments that do not have enough money for faculty travel," Maxson said.

In other disbursements, $1 million will go towards updating instructional equipment, $1.3 million will be for classroom repair, $681,600 will go toward augmenting University Library's collection of books and $75,000 will be used to ensure basic staffing requirements for the University Art Museum.

Total new campus authorizations total $11 million with $2.7 million being used on permanent, base-budget authorizations and $8.2 million going to one-time, nonrecurring authorizations.

Prior to the disbursements, requests are submitted to the Resource Planning Process Task Force, which prioritizes and sends them to Maxson, who divides the money accordingly. The RPP is composed of faculty, staff and students.

William H. Griffith, vice president of administration and finance said RPP membership is broad-based.

"The committee [RPP] makes its best attempt to make a good decision, in terms of allotment," Griffith said. "This is the best year in my 10 years in terms of giving departments what they want."

Providing an adequate number of classes for students, is a major priority of the RPP, Griffith said.