Facilities Management moves forward despite budget cuts
The Facilities Management Administration works through the summer to maintain the university and make improvements to make the campus more livable and efficient for students returning in the fall.
Like every other department at Central Michigan University, Facilities Management has had to make changes to cope with the university's recently announced $20 million budget deficit.
Central Michigan Life met with Jonathan Webb, associate vice president of Facilities Management, to discuss whether the recent budget cuts have changed how the department operates during its summer construction season:
CM LIFE: How has the budget deficit effected the Facilities Management Administration?
WEBB: Like every part of campus, we were asked to provide some ideas of how we could support a budget reduction. Having gone through that process, we'll see a slight reduction, like just about everyone else on the staff at the university has. We just need to adjust our priorities, and make every dollar count.
What kind of ideas did you propose during that process?
We're expecting to see a small reduction in our supplies and equipment funds, and we had some vacant positions that we were able to offer up for the greater good of the university. We have a little bit of a smaller budget and a slightly reduced capability to provide our services, but we're a good team. We feel like we can continue to execute the mission of supporting the facilities and infrastructure here at CMU.
Have you had to deal with budget cuts of this magnitude before?
The university has seen budget reductions many times in the past, so this is not new. The team always finds ways to try to make small improvements, and try to stretch every dollar that we have. We do the best we can to keep the university running.
Did the budget deficit effect the construction projects that Facilities Management already had planned for the summer?
There are many different types of budgets. There are capital reserves, energy funds for paying our utility bills, donations that come for specific projects, our deferred maintenance fund, and then there's the general fund. The budget reduction was mainly focused on the general fund. There are many different funds that we use to support things like construction, repairs and tackling deferred maintenance, and it was only one of those funds that was the focus of the budget reduction.
All of those different types of fund accounts help keep the facilities running and operating, and help us with construction and renovations. It's a big balancing act of trying to keep everything going using all the different types of funds. Of course, those different types of funds all have sets of rules dictating what they can be used for, so it isn't like there's one checkbook.
