Transcript Senate Meeting
April 7, 2015
Patricia Duffy chair: Hello everybody, it’s 3:30. Thanks for coming out to our April Senate meeting. I am Patricia Duffy, I am the Chair of the University Senate. If you are a senator or a substitute for a senator and have not signed in at the back of the room, please do so now. We will vote today so please pick up a clicker, they are in a basket at the back of the room
If you would like to speak about an issue or ask a question, please go to one of the microphones at the side of the room and wait to be recognized. Then please state your name and the unit you represent whether you are a Senator or substituting for a senator.
The rules of the Senate require that Senators or substitute Senators be allowed to speak first; after Senators have had a chance to speak, guests are welcome to speak as well. In addition I am going to ask that people limit their comments or questions to no more than 4 minutes of time, people may speak again but if you wish to speak a second or a third time please be sure that others have had a chance to speak at least once first. We are anticipating that this could be a long meeting, so I have a special request for today. We are asking that if you want to come to the microphones a second or a third time on the same issue it would only be to make a point that you personally have not yet made. That is if you come to the microphone a second or third time on an item please do so to make a point that differs from your previous comments. We have not had a lot of problems with people doing that, but just because this is such a long meeting, I wanted to make that request that if it is not new material and you have said it already please let someone else speak.
The agenda for the meeting was set by the Senate Steering Committee, it was sent around in advance and is now shown on the screen. So, if we would now please come to order, we will establish a quorum. There are 87 members of the Senate and a quorum requires 44 Senators. If you are present, and a senator or substituting for a senator, please press A on the clicker. A quorum has been established.
Our first item of business is approval of the minutes from previous meetings. We have 2 meetings that we need to approve the minutes for; we have the March 3, 2015, Senate meeting and the March 31, 2015 special called Senate meeting. These minutes have been posted to the Senate website.
So let’s look first at the March 3 minutes, are there any additions, changes, or deletions to these minutes? (no response) Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes? Second? We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say "aye." Opposed like sign? The motion carries to approve the March 3 minutes.
Now let us move to the March 31, 2015 special called Senate meeting. Are there any additions, changes, or deletions for the March 31 minutes? (no response) Do I hear a motion to approve the March 31 minutes? Do I have a second? We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say "aye." Opposed like sign? The March 31 minutes are approved.
Our next agenda item will be comments from President Gogue. [3:55]
Dr. Gogue, President: Thank you, delighted to be with you today. Just a couple of informational items I want to share with you. Number one, the Legislature had used up about a third of its days so there are another 20 days within the legislative session. The only thing of significance that I would share with you that goes against everything I’ve told you for the last 4 years that is important, is there was a plan for them to refill their coffers of rolling reserve funds where they would never have proration again. So we’ve been doing that for 4 years. There is now discussion that we really need the money right now, so maybe we will start taking some money out of the rolling reserve. Could be good for us in higher education, but it does mean that if you do it now that at some point in the future you’ll have proration type activities again. So that’s the only significant change that’s gone on down there in the last 10 days of the session.
Board of Trustees meets April 17, several items I want to share with you, there are 3 academic facilities that are on that agenda. One is a project will be created to do the renovation of Broun Hall, this building that we are in. Somewhere 7 or 8 million dollar renovation effort, private money is being provided for that renovation. This is the first step in the approval process so they will list that and approve it as a project and they will allow the university to go forward and select an architect.
Second project is the School of Nursing, they are at phase II of theirs which they will present the selected architect and the building construction manager. That’s phase II, what will happen after that for Nursing is the architects will do their work, 8, 9 months whatever the time frame is and it will come back to the Board with a final budget and approval for that project.
The other major academic project is the Classroom Laboratory Facility, it too is at phase II. That is the one that is the Laboratory building down at the end of the science corridor.
There’s a couple of other items that I want to mention from the Board agenda. There will be a tuition discussion by the Board and some expectation that a tuition decision will be made next Friday at the Board meeting. There will be a discussion of Bond reimbursement. There will be a resolution and a discussion on that. What it really means is that the university will spend money prior to having the bonds actually issued. They will be given the right to pay themselves back for the money they spent prior to issuance of the bonds, you don’t have to but it’s an option, so they will discuss that. [6:48]
There is an area in, the Provost may speak about it, there is an area on the military students that we have on campus, really two elements; one has to do with military credit and the other has to do with residency, in-state and out-of-state. There are some laws or rules that were changed Federally that said that if you are a veteran, a spouse, or a dependant and you live in Alabama, for every state you live in regardless of your existing residency laws then you are supposed to provide in-state residency, is a simple explanation. That has been back dated as I understand until last semester to be able to help those kids that were here when we didn’t cover that. So that’s on the agenda.
There are a couple of academic items that are on the agenda. One is the 31st graduate certificate program that deals with autism, that is on the agenda. There is an option in Earth Sciences that is on the agenda, and there is one other one, School of Kinesiology. They are going to stop issuing the Master’s of Education and it will now be an MS degree with a thesis or a thesis option.
So those are the items that are coming up on the agenda. I appreciate all of you being here today, we all look forward to hearing the discussion on the new budget model. Thank you.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Our next item will be remarks from our Provost, Dr. Boosinger.
Dr. Boosinger, Provost: The president said that he didn’t want to stand too close to me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you this afternoon and I am going to focus on some comments and observations about the budget process, we’ve really spent 2 years working on, but I’d like to start by thanking the Senate Officers, and the AD Hoc Senate Budget committee that’s worked to help us improve our allocation process at Auburn University.
During the past 2 years, if you are new at Auburn, we’ve had a comprehensive university wide discussion/debate, if you will, on how Auburn University could improve how it allocates it’s resources. Like for that to be thoughtful, strategic, and transparent. We consulted with peer institutions and nationally recognized experts on financial planning and higher education. As you know we also developed the new 5-year strategic plan, 2 years ago, and we are well into that planning process. Again in the strategic priority number 5, we made a commitment to better align our resources with our strategic priorities.
It was clear from the beginning of both of these projects that our current budget process is not nearly as effective as we’d like for it to be. In my view doing nothing is not acceptable. As we went through this process we started out first with discussion about what were going to be the guiding principles. I think those were really sound. So let me just run through those and comment on a couple of them. [10:20]
One was to deliver an accurate and realistic financial projection, or projections, throughout the budget cycles. We’ve actually learned a lot from that and our processes haven’t improved because we have a much better understanding because of this experience of how funds flow and how costs behave at Auburn University. So we’ve already improved what we are doing. We wanted to be able to have enough flexibility to meet future challenges that Auburn University might face. We are aware of many, there are probably some unknown to us now that we may have to address in the future certainly if you take the long view. We want to be able to fund strategic initiatives that are aligned with the Auburn mission. That’s addressed in the strategic plan, we need to find a process that allows us to do that in a way that will improve the quality of all sectors of our mission, instruction, research, and outreach.
We need to promote good decision making at all levels. The process to date actually has begun to improve how the decision-making process works all the way down to the department level. Business managers, accountants, budget services, administrators now have a better understanding of how our current funds flow, therefore are better able to make good decisions in the current environment. We are hopeful that going to an improved process would further enhance our ability to make good decisions. In addition to that we want to provide incentives for more effective management. [12:01] That’s pretty generic, but it’s important that we improve our ability to be efficient and effective, that we find solutions to serious problems other than just asking for additional funds to solve our problems or an additional FTE. We know we need to do that sometimes, but that’s not always the answer. It’s been a part of our culture in my experience that’s the first thing people want to do in order to try and solve the problem in front of them.
Finally we wanted in the principles for the process to be as transparent and logical as we could possibly make it. I wanted to comment on that because through this process transparency was a high priority. But transparency sometimes creates some discomfort. One example is the Mission Enhancement Fund. It would be naive for us to think that we are not currently using resources from low cost programs to subsidize other higher cost programs. I think everybody knows that. When we went through this process though and created the Mission Enhancement Fund, that’s really what this is about. That gives you a perspective anyway on how those funds have been behaving and what that means to us. It gives us some options and also creates some discomfort because now you can see that, before it was hidden. So I would argue that’s been going on for years, but we hadn’t looked at it closely enough to see how big those numbers were and how they might behave as we try to be more strategic.
It’s very important to remember that shared governance is critical to this process or any process that we finally agree upon. University and Senate committees will continue to oversee changes in academic programming. If we go to a process like the one that’s going to be discussed today the responsibilities especially the University Curriculum Committee will be greater than they are now to manage academic changes and make sure that we are true to our mission. [14:21]
I wanted to comment on 3 things in response to some questions that were raised last week that might provide some clarification and maybe save us a little time later. The shared governance system proposed in the model is highly respectful of the principles of shared governance or governance system. I don’t know if a lot of you got to look at that. There are committees in place that would help provide oversight for a number of processes. One example would be how we would conduct annual reviews of the class of support services like the Library and Facilities and HR and other centrally funded activities that faculty really right now don’t have a significant say in what the priorities are for those. Everyone generally thinks that is a good idea, but not all. [15:18]
Weighting, a perspective, when you first think about weighting it seems like a logical thing to do. When we talked to our consultants and talked to our peers that are using weighting, they discouraged us because it creates a level of complexity and actually can cause some divisive kinds of behavior. We tried to follow the advise of those groups.
Somebody asked last week about raises and how those would be managed. There’s 2 or 3 different options to manage that in this kind of model. All of them would be guided by a centrally agreed upon strategy. I doubt that is would be significantly different than what we have now. There would be a decision made centrally that we are going to provide funds at a certain level in any given year and we look at our available resources and have that discussion. So I don’t think that would change significantly.
Whatever we finally decide to do, we are all in this together. Resources are important to all of us and I think we need to work together to be smart about it and make sure that we are meeting our mission as I said earlier. I appreciate the opportunity and be glad to answer any questions you might have or comments.
Henry Kinnucan, Ag Econ and Rural Sociology, substitute senator: I am probably one of the free riders here, I haven’t really looked at this proposal in detail until just last night, but one of the things that struck me was that in just looking through some of the previous notes that there is a lot talked about in terms of mission, but nothing in terms of vision. So, you know, Auburn has a vision emerging as a preeminent land-grant in this century and I am wondering how will this advance that vision? And I have a follow-up, if you could address that first, how is this going to help us become a better research university in particular?
Dr. Boosinger, Provost: The vision and the strategic priorities come from the Strategic Plan. Whatever allocation model we end up having, it exists to support those strategic priorities, goals, vision for Auburn University. I didn’t want to spend too much time on this, but the model that is being discussed does allow a lot more dollars to flow to support research than the current model. [18:20] that helps and we can into the details if you like.
Henry Kinnucan, Ag Econ and Rural Sociology, substitute senator: My follow-up is that we mentioned weighting and I suspect that it would be very divisive. Weighting meaning that you put more weight to programs that are more heavily involved with graduate instruction research, particularly graduate instruction. My department, we have 29 doctoral students in Ag Econ, that’s more than all the other units in the College of Agriculture except Fisheries. And that’s grown almost 3-fold over the last 15 years. With the un-weighted allocation mechanism a department like mine, if fact the weight that was developed by the so-called Teeter Committee, weights Agricultural Economics .97, and weights Horticulture 1.24. Horticulture has 6 PhD students we have 29. So basically what it does gives you a window into what is likely to happen and that is programs that have been successful in their doctoral programs are going to get penalized and those who basically have not gone anywhere, they are going to get basically well maybe not effective, but anyway there is no incentives in that allocation mechanism that I see for graduate instruction particularly at the doctoral level.
Dr. Boosinger, Provost: The model as presented moves that decision making and priority setting to the colleges and schools. Currently a lot of those, like the graduate tuition waiver which has been pretty controversial, that was a centrally funded initiative–I think graduate tuition waivers are a good idea–right now though the units don’t have a lot of control over how to prioritize that against other research priorities in their units, so the model is just a tool, just a mechanism to support our strategic priorities.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Thank you Dr. Booinger.
On our agenda today we have 3 action items and information items, so this will be a fairly busy meeting. I am going to keep my remarks brief. First I will introduce the Senate Executive Committee, some of you are coming today for the first time may not know the committee. I’m Patricia Duffy, the chair; Larry Crowley is the immediate past chair and representative to the Board of Trustees; Larry Teeter is the chair-elect, Gisela Buschle-diller is the secretary; Laura Plexico is the secretary-elect. I’d also like to introduce our administrative assistant, Laura Kloberg, who does a lot for us, not just at these meetings but with many things between meetings to keep the business of the Senate on track. [21:08]
One thing I’d like to bring to your attention, early this academic year I asked an Ad Hoc Committee to come up with guidelines for items that would be referred to Academic Program Review. I made this request because I served on this committee a couple of times and the charge to the committee in terms of what’s meant by restructuring of a program wasn’t always clear. So items that came or didn’t come to the committee could vary from Provost to Provost over the years. So I asked an Ad Hoc Committee to come together to get guidelines for what should come to the committee, especially in the area of restructuring. The Ad Hoc Committee consisted of Emmett Winn, associate provost; George Flowers, dean of the Graduate School; Wi Suk Kwon, chair of Academic Program Review; Drew Clark, director of Institutional Research; and Constance Relihan, associate provost for undergraduate studies.
The guidelines drafted by this group were then sent to the Academic Program Review Committee, which voted to adopt them. The guidelines are posted online and can be accessed in that section of the Handbook that deals with Academic Program Review. I just wanted to bring that to everyone’s attention especially people in the future who are looking to know what goes and what does not go to Academic Program Review.
Are there any comments or questions for me? Hearing none, I am going to move to our first action item, which is a vote to revise section 3.7.1 to 3.7.2 of the Handbook. James Goldstein was here last month to present the proposed changes. After the meeting last month we had some questions about the clarity of the second paragraph of the proposal. Following those questions and comments, that paragraph was revised. The change in the paragraph does not affect the substance of the proposal, because no motion has yet been made on this item, an amendment is not required to make the language change at this point. James Goldstein will present this item.
James Goldstein, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review Committee: One thing unrelated to the vote we’re about to have I discovered between the last Senate meeting where this was presented and today that in 3.7.3, which you see now, you see the heading is Post Tenure Review, that actually is the section of the Handbook that has the most detailed information on Annual Review. I didn’t find it there, nobody noticed that, this helps reinforce that with the online Handbook now we really want to make sure that the titles accurately reflect what you will get when you click there. So we are going to move this to where it belongs under the annual reviews and eliminate any duplicate language. So that is not a substantive change, that is just stylistic, but I wanted everyone to understand that this was a glitch in the handbook and we’ll correct that on our own.
Now we can go to the version of this proposal that includes some new language. I am not going to take you through the PowerPoint again because now it’s even less relevant than it would be today. The changes that have been incorporated now since the last time you saw this, it was too recently so most of you will have no idea that the language is different for paragraph 2, but the substance of it is the same but just much clearer. So in the new version, which only went up today, so almost nobody would know to see it, the red font there is the new version of paragraph 2. So since most of you have never seen it or been aware of it let me just read this part out loud. [25:45]
Each academic unit shall develop procedures by which the department head/chair will conduct, at least annually, performance evaluations of faculty members who have not yet achieved tenure or promotion to associate professor or professor. These procedures shall be subject to review and approval by the dean of the college or school. Unit-level procedures may require the department head/chair to consult with the unit’s tenured faculty before conducting the annual performance evaluation of such candidates. The department head/chair shall take particular care to relate the faculty member’s performance to the promotion and tenure criteria set forth in this document and in applicable departmental guidelines that have been approved by the Provost’s Office. Significant achievements or deficiencies that might enhance or impede the candidate’s progress toward higher academic rank or tenure shall be noted. The third-year review of faculty members who have not yet achieved tenure, described below, shall serve as the annual performance evaluation in that year.
So it’s really the first part of that that is new language that clarifies that if this passes each unit would be responsible for coming up with how to do annual tenure review subject to the approval of the dean and then depending on what the units decide to do they may or may not involve consulting with the tenured faculty. [27:20] So that was a clarified statement of what the intent of the committee was.
So if we scroll down then what you see is the canceling of the old paragraph 2 including the blue underline part that would have been the new language in the old version of paragraph 2, but now all of that comes out because it’s covered in the clearer version that I just read out loud. Then everything else has gone into blue because those were the changes from what I presented in March that would be changes to the current Handbook language. So now because it’s an earlier version of it it has moved from red to blue. So those things in blue are not new to you today, but new to the Faculty Handbook if this proposal gets approved. You’ve seen all that before so I am not going to go over the details of it, but I would be happy to take any questions anyone might have about the proposal in the version that is currently going to be up for a vote.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: James, I like all this, I was just wondering why we are getting rid of in the red part at the top, are we getting rid of that April 30th deadline. Is this going to be…is that black part going to stay or is this red part replacing that black part?
James Goldstein, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review Committee: The black part is the same. That’s what it is now. That’s what it was in the last version I presented, that’s what will stay, it doensn’t need to be changed. So that April 30 is old and it will stay there.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: Okay, so is this red referring to an annual tenure type review or the regular annual review?
James Goldstein, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review Committee: Yes, this is for the annual tenure review. The second paragraph only pertains to people who haven’t yet gotten promotion or tenure.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: Okay, so maybe the regular performance review can serve as that annual tenure review? Or is it stating that…
James Goldstein, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review Committee: Right, it wouldn’t be two separate annual reviews. You could if you wanted to double the paperwork.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: I know, that’s what actually if you read the way of the current structure you are almost supposed to have a separate tenure review from the annual review. But this allows it to be integrated in a single annual review.
James Goldstein, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review Committee: Right, absolutely. My sense is that that duplication probably can be attributed to the way the annual tenure review migrated into the Handbook without perfectly calibrating the two. But that’s in the past.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: Okay, so this second paragraph
James Goldstein, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review Committee: In other words the intent is that the annual review for someone pre-tenure is also an annual tenure review.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: I just want to make sure the current policy allows in part of the regular annual review will be by April 30th so those two paragraphs can refer to the same document?
James Goldstein, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review Committee: Right, and by the way speaking of the document, this goes back to my announcement at the beginning, the place in the Handbook that stipulates the format of that document that is currently located under post-tenure review, so we will be moving that up and will spell out what that document looks like.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: but we’re now, if everyone in the department agrees and so forth, just have one annual review where we make tenure and promotion comments and so forth.
James Goldstein, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review Committee: Right. And for the third-year review that substitutes for the annual review, not to do a separate third-year review and annual review. Unless you want to.
Larry Crowley, IPC: James, you look real natural up there, congratulations on your election by the way. I appreciate all the things that you do here and I just have a few comments that I wrote down for us to consider.
This proposed revision to the Faculty Handbook makes the probationary period review of pre-tenured faculty a local departmental option without a university expected minimum. That’s one of my concerns.
And I know we all agree that there is a huge investment of cost and time and money of these probationary faculty in the assessment of a life-time appointment. And, we would also agree the viability of this investment, for them, is subject not only to their probationary-period performance but also to its assessment by multiple tiers of faculty, supervisors, committees, and administrators. By its construct, a significant trust relationship exists between the pre-tenured faculty and the assessment structure of the faculty and university. The recent introduction of departmental promotion and tenure guidelines have eased, but not necessarily eliminated the potential for subjective assessments depending on the particular style and metrics of the guidelines. Consequently, the application of these guidelines by the home department faculty in assessing the tenure and promotion portfolio of probationary faculty is central to the assessments of all tiers of review.
The question this proposed faculty handbook revision is asking us to make is whether or not there is a minimum expressed degree-of-care expected by the university in the conduct of this trust relationship or is it, as the proposed language would suggest, strictly a departmental option.
In answering this question for me which will be reflected in my vote against the proposed revision is there is a university minimum expected conduct and further this expectation should include the collegial involvement and input of home department faculty at a time when sufficient corrective action can be taken by the probationary faculty.
James Goldstein, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review Committee: Thank you. [34:07]
Rusty Wright, senator, Fisheries: I don’t know if there is a place in the Faculty Handbook, I can’t remember that defines department head and chair as…also applies to directors of stand alone schools, we just made that transition. And so somewhere in there, it’s just a language thing, so your committee could that under advisement to maybe have a definitional line, not necessarily the change in this but I am just reading this and thinking this doesn’t necessarily reflected in all structures
James Goldstein, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review Committee: Thank you. I would take that to be a stylistic clarification. The intent is whoever is responsible currently to do the annual review, whether their title is chair, head, or director. Thank you.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Are there any more questions or comments on the proposal? This is a proposal coming from a standing committee of the University Senate. As such it does not need a second. If there is no further discussion I will call for a vote on the proposal. If you are in favor of the proposal please press A and B for no. A=66, B=11. The motion carries to adopt this new language for the Handbook.
Next we have an item from Calendar and Schedules concerning make-up days for classes. This item was presented last time as with the previous item. There have been a few small changes since the last meeting in response to questions and comments and the item will be presented today for a vote. Robin Jaffe, chair of Calendar and Schedules will present the item. [36:31]
Robin Jaffe, chair of Calendar and Schedules: Thank you Patricia. Hi everyone, I’m back. The 2014 Calendar and Schedules committee proposal for make-up day policy, If you remember this was asked for by Larry Crowley and our President to create a policy for having make-up days when dealing with university closings and class cancellations and exam postponements due to inclement weather and emergencies.
The proposal presented today had the full consensus from all the members of our committee. Here is our committee, I would like to thank them for their work and let you know I appreciate my wife, Evie Rattner, as always being an inspiration to me. I was told by one of our committee colleagues that this is like having an anvil to kill an ant, this make-up day policy, but I try to the best we can to cover everything that we could.
The policy for assigning make-up days when dealing with university closings, class cancellations and exam postponements due to inclement weather and/or emergencies. We took our notes from the Senate meeting last month and tried to put in everything that everybody asked for. [38:11]
For the spring semester with any cancellation in the month the last Saturday of said month would be assigned as the make-up day, any additional cancellations in the month would be assigned the next Saturday in succession until all class days missed have been made-up. This is an example, We have January 21st , 28th; would go to the 31st and the 7th and if we had it on the 25th it would go on the 28th of February.
If cancellation takes place on a Thursday or Friday before the last Saturday of said month or after the last Saturday of said month, this sounds like the Passover haggadah, don’t know why? (laughter) The make-up day would be considered in the following month and will take place on the last Saturday of the month. This is an example where we have the 27th and/or the 30th, the last day would then be taken, the make-up day would be the 25th of April.
Okay, fall semester, football, we all love football or we have a garden, I have a great garden. The Calendar and Schedule Committee in conjunction with the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Registrar will review which Saturdays will be available after the announcement of the athletic department’s football schedule. Saturdays of away games and open dates will be available for the scheduled make-up days. The first available Saturday would be designated the official make-up day following a cancellation. If the cancellation is on a Thursday or Friday before the first available make-up day, the next available designated day will be assigned. This is an example for the 2015 calendar; September 5, September 19, October 10, October 17, October 24 and November 7 are all Saturdays available for this.
There will be no make-up days for December or May for the fall and/or the spring semesters respectively. The policy will follow the rules and regulations stated in the university policy on class attendance and not circumvent that said policy. Although this policy will be followed to create make-up days due to university closings, class cancellations and exam postponements due to inclement weather and/or emergencies, faculty have the right to not participate in the assigned make-up day and are the final arbitrator when it comes to an attendance policy for their class.
One of the things that is not on this PowerPoint is that reading days will not be assigned as a make-up day. So the students will have those days for their studying for their finals. Are there any questions?
Patricia Duffy, chair: This is also a proposal from a standing Senate committee so the motion to adopt the make-up day policy does not need a second. If there is no further discussion we can vote on the motion. Please press A in support or B opposed. A=68, B=9. 68 in favor, 9 opposed, the motion to create make-up days following this procedure outlined in the proposal carries. Thank you Robin.
The final action item is the vote on the report of the Ad Hoc Strategic Budgeting committee. this report was presented at the special called meeting last week. Steering set the agenda in such a way that the motion from the Ad Hoc committee will be made to accept the report. A vote to accept the report would be a vote in favor of the committee’s recommendations. The recommendations are here for you to see now. Before we bring Larry Teeter, chair of this Ad Hoc committee to present this item I wanted to answer some questions for everyone that has come to me from Senators and other people via phone or e-mail.
The motion to accept this report can be amendable, its amendable. Motions can be made to strike out some of the recommendations, to add new ones, or strike out and replace language. If these motions to amend carry and then the revised set of recommendations also carries the report itself cannot be changed, but revised recommendations will be appended to the report. That’s how this will be amended if it is amended. A motion can also be made to divide the question that is to vote on each item one by one. So I wanted to go through the possible motions that could come from the floor before we had the presentation by Larry Teeter. Thank you Larry. [43:28]
Larry Teeter, chair of the Ad Hoc Strategic Budget Committee: Not really sure what Patricia meant by presentation because that was last week. But I will go over once again these recommendations from our committee and then I guess we take an initial vote, we take comments of course.
Okay, [44:00] We had 4 one that’s complex, but 4 basic recommendations. The first one, can you read it from back there? No? I’ll read it.
The first one is:
1. Tuition and fees should be allocated according to some form of weighting procedure. [at the presentation last week we presented with 2 different approaches to weighting. One included weighted student credit hours and one the used partial leased squares method for determining the weights.] The wide variations in ‘Margins before MEF’ are not conducive to incentivizing deans and faculty. Two investigations of weighting methods both gave more units a better opportunity to produce a breakeven budget. Cost of instruction weighting is the most common approach used by other schools (if they choose to use weights at all [other schools using the RCM method]), but the PLS estimation approach presented here provides the best opportunity to arrive at a set of weights that will get all 12 Schools and Colleges as close to breakeven as possible, while minimizing the value judgments that seem to be associated with weighting instructional costs by discipline (under the PLS approach the weighting criteria are more objective student counts, faculty numbers, square footage of classroom space, etc.).
[This kind of was an early focus of committee discussions because so many people were concerned the first several meetings of the committee about the wide fluctuations or wide deviations from that zero level. A number of units were over 10 million dollars in the red, it was a model, we understood that, but there were several with large negative numbers being projected by the budget and others with large positive numbers being projected by this model. So the focus immediately became one of how do you get back to zero if you are severely in the red, deeply in the red and how can you assume that going forward, we are talking about a long-term change for the university going forward that you can always assume the Provost will be gracious and give you all you need.]
So what we thought the best strategy would be to get everybody close to zero so that if you did have to ask for money at the end of the budget year you didn’t have to ask for a lot. So that was kind of a fundamental thought that just kept percolating up at our meetings of the Budget Committee. And as I mentioned last week, there were 18 members of the budget committee, so they all brought comments from their constituents and there was quite a little discussion about these deviations. So if we were to adopt this particular method, a complex portion of that is to:
Re-examine the rationale for splitting tuition into various components [that they have in the current proposal from the Provost’s Office into] (resident/non-resident [pools and into]; department of instruction/department of major [pools]). [That kind of complicates the weighting procedure if we were going to use one. You can still apply weights but the amounts you are appling the weight then are to a much lower percentage, probably 70% basically because we are talking about the college of instruction, and we have instructional weights in one model and so it’s more difficult to get back to that break even point.]
If a weighting method is adopted as described above, these splits unnecessarily complicate the allocation of tuition and fees to units that need them to balance their budgets.
That’s recommendation one.[48:14]
Recommendation number:
2. Year-to-year reductions in funding should be capped at 3% of total revenues. Many of the academic units will face a negative margin as they are forecasting their revenues and costs (in the 2012 example, 2 units faced a shortfall of over $10,000,000). If the MEF contribution to the unit makes it solvent there is no problem. But if in budget negotiations, a Provost suggests awarding less than that amount, that reduction should not exceed 3% of the units total budgeted revenues for the year.
Still a fairly significant amount in a unit where total budgeted revenues might be 100 million dollars, but it does put a cap on what could be withheld by the MEF.
3. Review the selection of bases for determining contributions to the Central Support Allocation pools.
We didn’t do a lot or work much at all with these Central allocation pools or how the numbers were derived to …how to estimate contributions, yes, we had some bases for square footage and number of students and things like that, but how the numbers came up, the budget numbers, we didn’t talk about those at all. How much does Facilities need campus wide for instance, we didn’t talk about that. So we think we should be more involved in that going forward before the final version of the model is in place.
4. Institute a policy that encourages Colleges/Schools to prepare guidelines providing for the participation of departments (and their faculty) in the budget process.
Right now the allocations go to the dean. So whether or not any of this that we see about how the incentives are taking place filters down to the department and is really up to the deans. [50:23]
So the recommendation involved everybody in the budget process so they have a better idea of how the process works. That’s essentially the set of recommendations that we have.
Patricia Duffy, chair: We now have a motion from a committee of the Senate. I am going to open the floor for discussion. Please remember to come to the microphones, identify yourself by name and also by the unit you represent. Thank you.
Henry Kinnucan, substitute senator, Ag Economics: I appreciate the fact that you tried to take into account sort of complexity through the weighting process, but the reality is that the weights that you came up with really don’t account for differences in undergraduate versus graduate, particularly PhD level instruction. Let me give you one example; Your weight for the Veterinary College is 2 the ACHE weight for the Veterinary Med College is 20. So obviously now Provost Boosinger said, well it’s really up to the dean to decide how to sort of weather if they want to emphasize graduate instruction or PhD programs, but their problem is that this allocation mechanism reduces the resources significantly, which your assimilation suggests it will. The College of Agriculture within the dean’s hands are tied. They can’t do a lot about it. I think that is a little to facile of a response.
Did you try to make a distinction between complexities at different levels of education in your weighting scheme?
Larry Teeter, chair of the Ad Hoc Strategic Budget Committee: The data that we chose on cost per student credit hour they were all from doctoral level institutions in all the departments. So we assumed if they have doctoral programs then we were using them. We don’t know how much individual programs use them, like you said, you had one example of a department that had 6 students and another that had 26 students. We have no idea how that was reflected across the data that we’re used to develop these national norms, but they were doctoral level institutions, and on a departmental basis.
In regarding the Veterinary weight, if you notice at the bottom of the table there was no information from the Delaware cost study on Vet School, so we just estimated that equal to the other highest weight we had on campus, which was Chemical Engineering.
Gwynedd Thomas, senator, Polymer and Fiber Engineering: It was rather ironic that after our meeting this past Tuesday, an article appeared in the New York Times, tuition and state funding were the main elements of where our funding comes from in the budget model and the New York Times article said is about the real reason college tuition and college costs are going up so much. It has really nothing to do with us the professors, or the number of students, or numbers of units even. It’s ironic and sad that Auburn University would seem to have ignored the elephant in the room and I would like to present this to you, Larry, for the committee to consider. The people who seem to be weighing down most of the cost according to the article are middle level administration. I polled all of the members of my department and asked them if they wanted me to present any of their remarks here and I had a few that did. I will try to make them as brief as possible if I may read these?
Okay. While the budget model attempts to push for accountability what I expect is that only the academic programs will be held accountable. Small programs in department will disappear over time simply because they don’t produce enough students. This budget will make Auburn University a non-spectacular academic institution with only large and commonly know academic programs.
Next. I believe the entire process for the new budget is flawed because it does not count productive versus dependant units. Productive units are those that actually perform the work of Auburn as a land-grant university and fulfill our mission of instruction with research and extension. Money that is brought in through research and extension is not even considered in the budget even though half of all we bring in is taken away from us in those activities to fund the non-mission cost centers of the university. I believe that until the dependant activities of the university are taxed out the same as the working units we will never achieve an equitable and genuine budget that reflects the mission distribution of the university as well as the mission inhibiting units of the university.
Finally. I guess the report lacks data from the dependant units by administrative units. There is no mention of how to quantitatively evaluate their efficiency productivity. From the recent New York Times article it looks like the dependant units are growing many times faster than the productive units. It would be good to know the ratio and number and cost between administrative personnel versus professor/lecturer/instructor by years and see what the costs are for those units. I like the normalized tuition part but can only accept the new budget model if the committee can consider research dollars, outreach income, and the administrative costs. (senator passed the page to Larry Teeter) [56:35]
Mulie Dhananasekaran, senator, Pharmacal Sciences: In general the health professional programs, Vet Med, Pharmacy, and Nursing are in support of the current weighing in the current budget proposal, but however we would like to have a small provisional change. You all know that the current budget is not weighing in clearly the fact of the cost of instruction that is going into the health professional programs. That’s number one.
Number two, the Delaware data clearly suggests that you should not collect information from the health care professions. That’s the school of Vet Med , Medicine, and Dentistry. Further more you all know that the amount of clinical care that is provided to you from the School of Pharmacy. The pharmacy education has completely changed, radical change has occurred. We are moving toward clinical aspects, we are in align with regard to the other health care professionals. A lot of clinical service is being done.
Delaware data results say that the Pharmacy school should not be included with this particular program, because it is more than the undergraduate education. Other deans of peer institutions, public schools in regard to the Pharmacy school, they are not much aware of the Delaware data. One school has tried to use this data, Texas data and they have failed. It did not work in their school. So again we go back to say that this is not going to work in the health professional program.
We would like to amend a motion to state that the Health Professional Programs units would have to be redesigned to capture the cost of clinical education. [58:27]
Patricia Duffy, chair: Could you please state the amendment in the form of a motion? Which recommendation are you proposing an amendment to? And what is the language of the amendment?
Muralikrishnan Dhanasekaran, senator, Pharmacal Sciences: We are proposing that we amend the motion to state that health professions programs weighing would be redesigned to better capture the cost of clinical education.
Patricia Duffy, chair: We have an amendment to the recommendation, do we have a second? Before we can have discussions, we need a second to the recommendation. Sara Wolf, Education, Foundations, Leadership Technology, has seconded the motion. We can now have discussion on the amendment. The discussion now is focused on the amendment, not on the original recommendations. So we need to discuss the amendment to the proposed recommendations to have a special consideration for the units that have health care programs.
Ed Youngblood, Communication & Journalism, senator: One of my questions with that is if you are looking at adjusting that way are you talking about increasing that weight? Because if I remember correctly, Pharmacy goes from having a fairly small surplus to having a very large surplus under the weighted system as proposed and if the goal, if I may, the goal was to, with this weighted system, was to equalize things, so somehow or other with them saying we need to give them more money doesn’t seem to go along with the spirit of that. Or frankly, looking at the data, the need for Pharmacy.
Patricia Duffy, chair: More discussion or comments on the amendment? The amendment to add language about looking at the health programs and developing special weighting.
Jada Kohlmeier, senator, Curriculum and Teaching: I had come with a question that I think is related to this amendment. The question was, already many of the professional programs across the campus are using student fees and professional fees to alleviate that extra burden that they see in the expense of educating their students and…I think my question was, if we do the student credit hour weighting system would that be on top of the professional fees all of theses units are already receiving and would that then further exacerbate some of the concerns that we are having about some units having lots more money than others.
Larry Teeter, chair of the Ad Hoc Strategic Budget Committee: That is a question that is not that directed at the amendment. I think the amendment is saying Pharmacy and other medical related programs would like to be outside of this budget system if we use weighting. [1:01:35] That’s what I heard, is that correct?
Regarding the professional fees, they do go direct to the colleges and only allocable tuition is affected by the weighting system or by the prior system of coming up with the original numbers based on student credit hours. So tuition otherwise is just straight student credit hours, has nothing to do with the tuition differentials.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Just on the proposed amendment.
Rusty Wright, senator, Fisheries: Where does that amendment
Patricia Duffy, chair: It would be a fifth recommendation.
Rusty Wright, senator, Fisheries: It would be a fifth recommendation?
Patricia Duffy, chair: As far as I can tell. Would that be your sense? (asking of the parliamentarian) I would say as a fifth recommendation.
Rusty Wright, senator, Fisheries: Okay.
Patricia Duffy, chair: There would be additional language added as a fifth recommendation. Comments about the amendment?
Calvin Johnson, senator, Veterinary Medicine: The professional fees as I see it in the budget calculations are included in the differential between revenue and expenditures. Wouldn’t that be correct? These are in the calculation for that differential that we are trying to address.
Larry Teeter, chair of the Ad Hoc Strategic Budget Committee: The differential tuition goes directly to the colleges. They are not affected by any reallocation of allocable tuition, so they are separate from them.
Calvin Johnson, senator, Veterinary Medicine: But they are included in the calculation on the budget?
Larry Teeter, chair of the Ad Hoc Strategic Budget Committee: They are included in the calculation and on the deviation from the Mission Enhancement Fund.
Calvin Johnson, senator, Veterinary Medicine: So that differential is reflecting in addition to the tuition return the return of professional fees? So it is all calculated in the calculations we looked at? Professional fees plus…
Larry Teeter, chair of the Ad Hoc Strategic Budget Committee: …Mission Enhancement Fund.
Calvin Johnson, senator, Veterinary Medicine: So I would say that there is justification for an amendment that would separate out the Health Science Professions for that reason. [1:03:57]
Patricia Duffy, chair: Additional discussion on the amendment to have a recommendation concerning health care fees, only discussion on the amendment at this point.
Hilary Wyss, senator, English: Am I understanding by this amendment that we could be here all day while each college comes forward because they want to be…
Patricia Duffy, chair: It’s possible, unless there is a motion that someone could make.
Hilary Wyss, senator, English: It strikes me that we probably need to talk about these 4 before we start amending…
Patricia Duffy, chair: We have to allow amendments through parliamentary procedure. I can’t skip that process.
Hilary Wyss, senator, English: I mean could we maybe cluster the amendments?
Patricia Duffy, chair: I cannot as chair.
Hilary Wyss, senator, English: Can I amend to amend the amendments such that they are clustered at the end?
Patricia Duffy, chair: Okay, but I cannot as chair. Is there more discussion of the amendment?
Brent Fox, senator, Health Outcomes Research and Policy, Pharmacy: I wanted to address Ed’s question. I think the amendment from Pharmacy is being brought forth because the Delaware data do not reflect Pharmacy. Whether the increase is up or down as you talked about it, it is more about using data that are accurate to come up with the weighting. I think that’s what is boils down to.
Patricia Duffy, chair: More discussion of the amendment?
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication and Journalism: What I just want to make clear, Brent may have addresses some of my concerns, but when I asked for clarification my understanding was that amendment was put into place so that an increased weight could be used for Pharmacy and Veterinary, not an adjusted weight. Because that was the question I asked. If my reaction seemed a bit terse, that was why my reaction was a bit terse. Are we talking about reevaluating that based on a weight or are we evaluating what that weight should be, it can fluctuate up and down depending on the data or are we talking about doing this so that rate would go up?
At this point I am not clear what that means.
Larry Teeter, chair of the Ad Hoc Strategic Budget Committee: I interpreted it to mean he wanted to be removed from the weighting process. Pulled out of that portion of the budget calculation. Which means they would get less of an allocation of the weights we gave.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication and Journalism: Okay
Larry Teeter, chair of the Ad Hoc Strategic Budget Committee: Because originally the weights were just 1, they were all equal student credit hours.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication and Journalism: Okay, I’ve got to say I’m…and maybe I am just tired and have not had enough coffee, that’s a possibility…but I am having trouble wrapping my head around some of the information with that. Thank you.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Could we get the senator from Pharmacy to please come and succinctly state what the proposed additional language would be? [1:06:57] If you come to the microphone please, I cannot handwrite. I have a deficiency in my right hand, so I cannot write it out. So would you please state very clearly what the proposed language that you which to add as a fifth recommendation would be?
Muralikrishnan Dhanasekaran, senator, Pharmacal Sciences: We are proposing that we amend the motion to state that Health Professions Programs, weighting would be redesigned to better capture the cost of clinical education.
Patricia Duffy, chair: So It would be to redesign the weight for the Health Professional Programs, which would be Pharmacy and Vet Med and Nursing to better capture the costs.
I would like to make a comment if I may. The recommendation here is not saying we must use one particular set of weights or another, it is just simply recommending a weighting system and two examples are given.
Thank you for clarifying what the proposed recommendation language is. That will be captured in the transcript so will be able to have it. Do we have any discussions just on the amendment?
Wesley Lindsey, senator, Pharmacy Practice: Also I think this addresses your question and I think Brent made the point as well, is the Delaware data and the Texas data have been used and do not fit the Health Professions Education very well, so we would just like the opportunity to present additional data of other weighting systems that have been more successful. So not that we are trying to only increase our allocation only that we have the opportunity to present additional evidence when this weighting, if we go to a weighting system, is more accurately being used.
Does that kind of address your question? It may go down if you use appropriate data. What we are saying is can we use appropriate data when creating the weighting system for what we are trying to do? And for the other health professions as well.
Patricia Duffy, chair: So a recommendation to, if weights are going to be used, appropriate weighting systems will be used for the Health Professions.
Wesley Lindsey, senator, Pharmacy Practice: I think that is what we were trying to accomplish, what that amendment is trying to accomplish.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Do we have more discussion on the amendment?
Okay, a motion has been made to amend the recommendations, and it’s been seconded, we’ve had debate; now this vote is only on the amendment to add a fifth recommendation relative to the Health Care Professions that appropriate data be used to develop weights for their program.
Please press A for yes on the amendment, press B for no. A=24, B=49. The amendment was defeated by 49 to 24. The floor is now re-opened for discussion on the original set of recommendations..
Larry Teeter, chair of the Ad Hoc Strategic Budget Committee: I would just like to point out that the first recommendation is to adopt a weighting system. It is not either of those in particular, it’s just that we demonstrated by using those 2 weighting systems what weighting can do. There hasn’t been any particular weighting system that’s been recommended or approved.
Tom Smith, senator, Human Development and Family Studies: What’s just transpired I think fits in with what my comment was going to be anyway. My department is going to vote to not accept this report primarily based on the idea of weighting, I’m glad the Provost talked about a very important point that I think was missed from last weeks discussion, which is preeminent consultants in the country on this kind of issue, Huron that we hired as other institutions talk with suggested to not use weighting. The reason that we feel this way about is we are interested in this transparency and getting things as close as possible to the units that produce the tuition revenue as it is and actually see what kind of income is actually coming in, etc. and begin to work with that.
What I think just transpired fits with this, what the consultant said was; if you use weighting you will just be chasing weighting. We will be chasing weighting, it is already divisive as we see in just this one little episode. So we’re hoping that the rest of you in the departments, I understand what ever happens with this, there is gnashing of teeth and worry if we go to a new system, but there’s been plenty of gnashing of teeth about the system we’ve been using and we would like to see, from my department, that we go to let’s try it with no weighting as the experts have suggest that we do after looking at universities all over the country and seeing what has happened etc. with it. Thank you.
Hillary Wyss, senator, English: I too would like to speak out against the first recommendation about weighing. I think as we’ve seen it’s divisive. I also want to point out, and this was pointed out in the last meeting, that the RCM model already comes with the subvention pool, which I believe is the MEF fund, so perhaps the work of the committee could be on making sure that that MEF fund is allocated in a way that makes people more comfortable or that has supports or protections that the university would like to see in place, that the Senate would like to see in place, but it seems to me that producing a different system to cover something that is already in the budget model is redundant and works against exactly what it is supposed to
Patricia Duffy, chair: Is this a motion to eliminate recommendation one?
Hillary Wyss, senator, English: Yes.
Patricia Duffy, chair: So we now have another motion to amend the recommendations by eliminating recommendation one which involves weights. We have to have a second for the motion. A second is heard. I’ll open the floor to discuss whether or not we should amend the set of recommendations by removing recommendation one. Is there discussion about removing or keeping recommendation one? [1:13:31]
Mike Stern, senator, Economics: I spoke about this last time so let me bring up something I didn’t talk about. While weighting is divisive, that’s a political reason not to do it. The economic reason why you do not weight revenues is because you do not weight costs. So none of you want to be paid in Auburn bucks you want to be paid in U. S. Dollars, which are perfectly substitutable one for one. So as we go forward making new investment decisions should this university grow, if you say I’m going to invest this dollar of cost into the following unit, if you don’t measure the revenue that will be generated there in the same units, then you make mal investments going forward.
So yes we may have made strategic decisions in the past that may have made some units to be subsidized and others to be taxed and so forth, in the long run you can’t do that because it is unsustainable and it leads to bankruptcy. So if every time I invest a dollar over here and I only get 60 cents return, but then I pretend like it’s a $1.20, then I will keep investing dollars there and keep actually loosing when I think I am gaining. Right? Because all costs are not going…none of the costs are going to be weighted, all the bond issues have to be paid in U.S. dollars, all the buildings, all the salaries are paid in U.S. dollars and will not be weighted–if you weight revenue systematically in a differential manner then you will make incorrect investment decisions going forward, which is why there is no economic basis to do so and I don’t know really firms that do that or have a profit or long-term sustainability either.
If the worry and the reason behind number one was the choice that the Provost Office or somebody has in covering deficit and you don’t like them to have a choice, the way you get to initial balance is formulaic with the initial deficits. So you said your budget allocation is where you start, ten million plus your RCM revenue and that pus you at neutral rather than just saying we will have a pool and we will decide whether to cover that deficit. You can’t make it formulaic where we’ve decided to have a ten million dollar investment and you went above your revenue so you take away the discretion. That keeps the proper margin going forward and makes the deficit that we currently have some. So at least in terms of new dollars and going forward you have this same revenue cost comparisons and everybody starts even, but at least going forward you then, you know what I’m saying, so there is a fixed amount, but we treat all new dollars that are coming in and being invested on a one for one basis for correct decisions.
Anyway, I support that motion to strike #1. [1:16:20]
Rusty Wright, senator, Fisheries: I fundamentally go the other direction and don’t believe that we should remove the weighting system. I don’t think we’re a business and I don’t think that we should be managed in that way. It’s a matter of what you value, right?, so is value a dollar for dollar kind of savings? Not necessarily so. So how the weightings are done, sure, it’s always going to move this discussion to the weights. That’s what we learned from all the other schools that came in, that’s the debate. I think it does become an issue of trust, but we are looking at a way to limit that risk and I think that’s what you are trying to do when you even out those pre- and post-models.
Jerrod Windham, senator, Industrial Design: I’d like to agree with my colleague that our department at least is in favor of the weighting. Recognizing the difference in costs associated with educating students across a variety of academic disciplines.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Other comments about the amendment to remove the first recommendation?
Connor Bailey, not a senator: The absence of weighting is still a weighting. If one is one that is still a weight. And I think that my colleagues in Liberal Arts, and I am a sociologist and have some sympathy there, are going to benefit greatly because they teach large numbers of undergraduate classes. Other units across campus, Forestry, Agriculture, elsewhere, spend a lot more of their effort teaching graduate and upper division classes and so are going to be penalized. Fortunately we have Tim Boosinger, who will protect us because he loves research. We all trust him. We also all know Provosts, Deans, etc. come and go, so I would like to not rely on the individual Tim Boosinger, but rather I would like to rely on something that has a weighting that is transparent, we are going to chase it, but we’re also chasing a one equals one weighting too, that is still a weighting. We need to have a weighting system that actually reflects the complex nature of this university. To over simplify to say that one equals one does not do us service to the graduate education and mission of this university.
Bob Locy, senator, Biological Sciences: I want to echo what Connor said with one minor modification. We are not really discussing one equals one, we’re really discussing a complex formula for weighting. In the original model if you throw out recommendation one it seems that that’s what stays intact, which is 70% of the courses you teach plus 100% of the students in your college also weighted by in-state and out-of-state tuition. So when we say we’re not discussing weighting if it is to revert back to the existing model, that’s just a different form of weighting really. And it is the one that sort of came with Huron’s recommendation. Doesn’t make it right, doesn’t make it wrong, just appreciate what we are discussing.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Any more comments about the amendment on the floor to remove recommendation #1?
Hillary Wyss, senator, English: I just want to say that there is already built into the plan a system in which you get to balance out. What the committee can go back and consider is how that money is going to get allocated. I would hope there would be faculty representation on the committee that takes that amount that’s there to equalize, but not count it up front, seems to me a little illogical.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Other comments on the amendment?
We now have an amendment on the floor to remove recommendation #1, which says tuition and fees should be allocated according to some form of weighting procedure. If you are in favor of the amendment, which is to remove that recommendation in favor of weights, so if you are in favor of removing this recommendation about weights, please press A, if you are opposed, please press B. A=38, B=35. By a very narrow margin, 38 to 35, the amendment to remove the recommendation for weighting has passed.
So we now have before us recommendations 2, 3, and 4. I would now like to open the floor back to discussions of the original proposal as now amended to remove recommendation 1.
Are there any further comments about the proposal that’s before us as amended? Okay, if there are no further comments, discussion, we will now vote on the amended set of recommendations. 2, 3, and 4. Please press A if you are in favor of these recommendations, Press B if you are opposed. A=43, B=27. The amended set of recommendations has passed.
Thank you all for your patience with this longest proposal we’ve had all year. Just for the icing on the cake we now have a presentation about parking and traffic on campus.
[Don Andrae did not speak into the micophone so some of his words dropped out.]
Don Andrae, Manager of Parking Services: I’m going to go quickly because I have got to go do a presentation across campus soon.
Basically I am going to talk about is we made some changes coming up in the new year. [1:24:20] The big one is that we are going to license plate recognition which means you will not be getting a hangtag at all next year. What you do is you register your vehicle, and I assume a lot of you may have gotten tickets this year for unregistered license plate, now one of the reason we were writing those tickets is so you would come by or notify our office. We are going to put on our Web site a place that you can do that as opposed to sending e-mail. What it would be is basically the license plate will be your registration for your permit, it will register you for A-zone or B-zone parking, but you will not get a permit.
We have trucks, which I am going to show you in a second here how it works. There is a $20 charge, which the Traffic and Parking Committee passed if you do more than 2 vehicles, not that many people have more than 2, some have had 15 or 16 license plates. We were discussing a rule concerning pulling into instead of backing into spaces and that did not go through, so right now we are going to go without it.
This is basically how the truck works and you see the two cameras on the top, as we ride down through the row it reads the license plate. It goes to a computer and the computer says it is registered or not registered. We can determine which zone it’s in, if we go through a lot that has A on one side and B on the other we can set the cameras (accordingly). Any questions about that?
Mell Street closing. There has not be a determination how we are going to do this, but we all know the classroom building is going to be started here in the summer. Whether or not the entire Mell ST closes between Mary Martin Hall entrance to the back side and the Library Drive, or leave one lane open has not been determined yet, but it is for sure that if they do leave one lane open the TigerTransit will continue to run down Mell, if not then TigerTransit is going to be going up outside of Mell between there and Roosevelt. So all of you that work in that quadrant will see a lot of difference in the traffic as far as the busses and also to where you can go straight up Mell. That’s something to look for. Of course when they get through there is a huge pedestrian crosswalk being part of that project and it’s a good possibility that it will remain closed and become part of our pedestrian (campus).
I do have some new parking zones. In know it’s hard to read the map up here. We do a survey every year of all the parking lots. We do it on two different days and two different times, what we do is count the number of spaces and the occupancy. During that time in the past year, I am sure a lot of you have noticed that the ones we call the PC lots have not been occupied as much as the As and Bs. In reviewing that what we are going to do to make a change for next year and create additional B-zones in the small lot behind Public Safety. In addition to that, in the arena lot, we are going to continue the B-zone all the way across on the side facing Heisman and add some B-zones there, which will add somewhere around 75 B-zones spaces. [1:27:36]
? has agreed to not have RVs in the West one out there in the RO lot which means we won’t have to move students for football and so therefore we’re changing some of the commuter resident lots by the CDV we will change that now to be CDV C-zone.
That’s pretty much the major changes, we are adding the parking back along the south side or the east side of ? which ever way you want to look at it, which was closed when they were doing construction for the new indoor track there for athletics. So we are adding those back, which once again will be zone C. So we are adding some spaces for Cs, space for As and Bs and we are moving around based on the evaluation that we do every year.
We changed the rules last year and a lot of people had questions about whether we want to do that or not. One of the big rules we changed was fee structure. Fortunately I was present at who wrote the software for the parking system and I have yet to convince him, I told him I have to go back to work for them to change it, but if you notice if you get a ticket it says $50 on the front, see back, nobody ever looks at the back, they see $50. I told them I could change that in a second where it wouldn’t have a dollar amount because I do not want a dollar amount on the front of the ticket. But we had 2 choices, either put a dollar amount or zero. If all of you got a zero dollar ticket you would not pay attention, so we left the $50 on there which brought your attention and nobody really looked on the back (where it says) first ticket $10, second ticket $20, third ticket $40, and the next one is $50 after that. Because of that everybody thought on the Traffic and Parking Committee that we would write a lot more tickets. And to prove it we have. Since August to January series, the last one we had 9,700, this year we did 10,000. So not that many more but there were some additional ones. A lot of those are probably those are unregistered license plates. The revenue of course from that is down because it’s 10, 20 ,40, 50 instead of 50 all along. So we did loose a lot of revenue on it, but that’s okay.
The other rule we changed was the fact that you can only appeal 3 tickets in one year. They thought we’d have a lot more appeals, which we have a little bit more appeals, but what we added of course you can see the appeals to the Board had denied more. Now the rules are better and more explicit. We only have had 8 people who have already done their 3 appeals for this year. They are finished.
The permit holders, the statistics on that you can see the ones that have one ticket from last year has actually gone down. We don’t have that many people with more than one ticket, we do have some with 4 or more, we have some with 50. The other rule we changed was the $20 extra for registered vehicles and from the statistics we had, we only had with more than 200 vehicles registered we only had 540 people. Out of those 540, probably about 300 of them are the one where they had vehicle [voice dropping out a lot here] the committee went ahead and said [another voice drop out]…
The biggest one we got to change is the fact that next year all non-conventional vehicles, basically golf carts and similar things, will have to be registered with Parking Services. There is a golf cart committee that is going on right now and they are trying to determine not only the parking but also the safety and registration of them. So the only thing I can really do is the registration. I can’t determine whether there is somebody is properly certified to drive a golf cart and everything else. All I can do is parking. So they are going to have to register with us. There will be a $20 charge for the permit. How it will help us is that if you see a golf cart that is going the wrong way somewhere the sticker will be large enough on there that you will be able to see it and all you do is get that number and let me know. I will be able to identify that department and talk to them about the fact that they are not driving safely or whatever it will be. We are also going to try to make sure that you are not parking on sidewalks, blocking doors, and other things along that line. So having that number on there will help us identify it.
The last thing I want to talk about quickly is we are doing a bike share program starting next year. Basically what you will see is this is the bike. What we are going to have is 75 of those bicycles available to faculty, staff, and students. You can barely see it but there is a GPS device on the back side by the wheel. You will register online for the app, download it, it will tell you where the available bikes are. You go to the bike and put in bike 6 and it will automatically unlock. You take the bike and you go and as long as you bring it back to that spot you got it from within 24 hours there is no charge. Of course I know where the bike is and who has because when you register for it, it tells me that. It’s a way to keep up with them. It has a nice basket on the front. This one does not reflect but does have lights on the front and back.
You can see from this one is that it is very low maintenance with puncture proof tires, all aluminum and does not have a chain it has a rubber belt, and it’s a 3 speed.
That’s pretty much, quickly, the changes for next year. We went through budgets and everything else, quickly what I want to say is, people don’t realize this, we would love to build parking decks, but parking decks are $15,000 a space, so you figure that at 600 space deck, that’s 90 million dollars. I know you don’t want me to take 90 million dollars from your programs. We will have to figure out some other way to park but I know you don’t want me to take it from you programs.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Thanks. I want to apologize for not introducing you when I called you up. This is Don Andrea the director of Parking Services, and a real trooper to stay to the end to tell us about changes in parking. Thank you.
Okay, we have concluded our regular business. Do we have any new business? Hearing none.
Do we have any any unfinished business?
Hearing no new business or unfinished business I will call the meeting adjourned. Thank you. [1:34:11]