UNIVERSITY GEARS UP FOR BUDGET REFLECTION

The process of drawing up a budget for Southeast Missouri State University for the next fiscal year will begin in earnest when the institution's Budget Review Committee convenes in mid-February.

The 24-member committee comprised of faculty, administrators, staff and students is scheduled to hold an organizational meeting at that time.

Ken Dobbins, vice president for finance and administration at Southeast, said Tuesday that at the first meeting the committee will also hear reports on various issues and items that the budget committee last year suggested should be explored further.

Since last spring, various committees have been assigned to study a long list of issues.

One such item is parking. "The parking committee is really active," said Dobbins. "They have been meeting twice a month."

The parking committee has reviewed parking fees and the longterm parking needs of the university.

The committee has looked at the fee schedule, but also the larger parking issue. "We wanted them to look at the needs, not only the fee issue. We wanted them to look at the broader picture of the real need for parking at Southeast," said Dobbins.

For example, he pointed out that when construction starts on a new business school building, near the corner of New Madrid and Henderson, the university will lose about 400 parking spaces during the duration of the project.

The $12 million-plus building is expected to take 18 months to construct.

"That's why we need to look at alternative ways of providing parking spaces," said Dobbins.

Other areas to be reported on include testing service fees and making alumni services more self supporting. The latter issue is already being addressed with establishment of alumni dues, Dobbins said.

The university's top capital improvements funding priority for the 1994 fiscal year remains the business building, Dobbins said.

"All the drawings aren't finished yet, but they are close enough that if we would get approval for this year, we would be constructing (the building) this fall," he said.

Unlike last year's exhaustive budget review process, Dobbins said the budget committee won't examine every university operation in detail this year.

"We will not be having hearings line by line like we did last year," he explained.

The budget committee, he said, will focus on reallocation of funds and "requests for new dollars and programs."

"It will probably be the first part of March when we get into those meetings," said Dobbins.

One of the committee's major tasks annually is to look at salary requests from employee groups and make recommendations regarding a salary package.

Dobbins said he expects the budget committee to meet regularly this spring, probably every other week.

At this point, Dobbins said it's too early to tell if the state-funding picture for higher education will improve for the next fiscal year.

"We will just have to see how the legislative process goes this year, with a new governor and quite a few new people in the legislature."