Wednesday’s University Senate meeting ended how it had begun three months earlier.

This was supposed to be the last meeting of the semester — one during which senate committees usually tie up loose ends on resolutions in preparation for eventually rolling them out the following academic year.

Until, at the last minute, it wasn’t. The meeting was supposed to let out at 5:30 p.m. With just minutes left, there was a sense of urgency and confusion as senators stared up at presentation slides showing huge numbers and, they argued, huge gaps in explanation.

This was similar to a meeting three months ago, when listening to another budget committee presentation, senators complained of having no time or guidance when viewing the budget reports. At this meeting, they were promised a second chance to look at them at an additional meeting scheduled for next week.

Senate Budget Committee Chair Dawit Negussey spoke about how Syracuse University might be able to pay for the Academic Strategic Plan, which was completed last July. The plan is a part of the Fast Forward initiative and largely serves as a guide for the university’s priorities and decision-making in the future. It’s almost in the implementation phase, which brings questions about how it will be done and how much it will cost.

Negussey said it could cost the university anywhere between $6 million to $15 million to implement. In conversations with Director of Budget and Planning Gwenn Judge, he said the funding could be drawn from schools and colleges’ subvention funds.

Subvention money is what is left over from a “responsibility center’s” participation tax — a fee collected from each center’s revenue. Responsibility centers include schools, colleges, the athletics department, the Carrier Dome and other auxiliary units. The participation tax is based at a rate of 11.5 percent, according to the budget committee report.

As Negussey spoke about this idea, more and more representatives from those schools and colleges left Maxwell Auditorium, including Chancellor Kent Syverud.

He continued through the report until, at once, Tina Nabatchi bubbled up with fury and read her thoughts from a piece of paper.

“I have made this statement multiple times and at multiple senate meetings. The work that the budget committee does is so important…it’s clear that people don’t understand it and if we don’t understand it we don’t respond effectively,” said Nabatchi, an associate professor of public administration and international affairs. “I think this is so critical and it’s absurd that it’s at the end when the senate leaves, when the chancellor leaves.”

Nabatchi’s statement elicited applause from the senators still in the room and led to a motion calling for an additional meeting to be held.

Senators noted that it wasn’t the budget committee that was the enemy, but more so the dense, somewhat brief reports being issued.

The six-page budget committee report, although not presented in its entirety at Wednesday’s meeting, makes several recommendations on SU’s finances.

It suggests that the university reconsider “paying very high salaries and benefits to retired deans and senior administrators” who return to being faculty members, saying it is “potentially corrosive.”

As it stands, that model is “not sustainable,” Negussey said.

The report also mentions allocating more money to the university’s libraries, and gives an overview of SU’s budget, projecting that it may use more money than it earns.

Published on April 13, 2016 at 10:40 pm

Contact Annie: apalme05@syr.edu