Update on the approved New York State budget
The following message was sent to all faculty and staff via email on April 15.
Dear Faculty and Staff,
We write to share key elements of the 2021-22 NYS enacted budget and implications for SUNY. As we wrote earlier this week, we are still working to understand full implications for our campus, and some questions remain. Here is a summary of the most important information we know at this time:
Contractual Salary Increases. Those increases – so well deserved, especially in this most challenging year – were restored in full in the enacted budget. As we shared earlier, we are awaiting further instruction about timeline for those increases, which will be retroactive. There has been confusion around reference to these awards being “fully funded.” The budget represents spending authority for those funds, but we must draw on campus resources to cover these recurring costs for most employees, as has been the case for several years. The exception is UPD/PBA, whose contract remains unsettled and whose members have worked without salary increases for several years. The binding arbitration award in the budget funds salary increases for 2015-2018.
Direct Taxpayer Support. We recently received full taxpayer support for fiscal year 2019-20; previously 12% of that funding had been withheld. Current year (2020-21) direct taxpayer support was reduced by 5%; that reduction remains in effect. SUNY is in discussion about potential use of federal stimulus funds (beyond those already allocated to SUNY) to help cover that reduction. On a positive note, that reduction is restored in the 2021-22 budget, returning our support to that of the 2019-20 fiscal year.
TAP Gap. The “TAP Gap” is the difference between the maximum Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) grant award and the cost of tuition. Campuses fund the difference, a total cost to us typically in the range of $3 million. The maximum TAP award for next year will be increased by $500 – this is good for our students with the highest financial aid needs. The budget includes a plan to eliminate the TAP Gap covered by campuses by 2024-25.
Flat Tuition. Undergraduate resident tuition has been frozen at current levels for the next three years. This is a positive action for current and prospective students as many of them and their families continue to deal with financial impacts of the pandemic. Of course, flat tuition means that the campus faces even greater financial challenges as we plan for inevitable inflationary, contractual and other year-to-year cost increases.
Capital. The budget includes $550 million in funding for critical maintenance of existing facilities, identical to the past two years. The SUNY New Paltz share of those funds is $4.6 million, a slight increase over last year. That $550 million includes $396 million of currently unallocated funding for “Priority Critical Maintenance Projects,” a share of which we will compete for, as we did very successfully last year. Some recent or current projects supported by critical maintenance funds include window replacement in Jacobson Faculty Tower, renovation of main floor of Smiley Arts Building and of the Lecture Center lobbies, various roof replacements, Fine Arts Building windows and façade and the Student Union roof and 4th floor renovation. There is no clarity on a budget allocation of $100 million in bonded monies, which may be used for new construction. That $100 million is for the entire SUNY system. For scale, we currently estimate a cost of at least $60 million for a new academic building for our campus.
As we have written before, there was considerable early pessimism about the outcome of this year’s NYS budget process, given the major pandemic impacts on the state’s finances. The Governor’s Executive Budget and the final outcome were far more positive for SUNY. In addition, the several packages of federal stimulus funds support our students and benefit the campus budget, though stimulus funds do not fully cover our pandemic-related revenue losses. Also, because the stimulus funds are one time, they do not eliminate the need for us to further adjust our recurring expenditures in the coming years. Reaching or exceeding our enrollment and tuition revenue targets will be critical in this calculus. We remain under strict spending constraints as outlined by the Governor and SUNY last spring.
We expect further detail about SUNY funding in the coming weeks, and will have a better sense of our student recruitment success as the spring progresses. Having an in-person fall semester is critical to our enrollment successes. Those outcomes will give us a clearer picture of the magnitude of the expenditure reductions we must achieve in the coming years to right our budget. We will undertake those changes through the same collaborative approaches we have employed in previous budget reductions.
Sincerely,
Michele Halstead, Vice President for Administration & Finance
Donald P. Christian, President