Draft Minutes

Thursday, September 26, 2002

1:00-3:00 pm by video and audio conference

Fairbanks location: Butrovich Building – Conference Room 212A

Anchorage location: University Lake Building Video Conference Room

Juneau location: Egan Library Video Conference Room

Valdez location: Grouzin Harrison Building Video Conference Room

Bridge number: 877-751-8040; 474-8050 in Fairbanks

Pass code: 450233

1:00 1. Call to order and roll call 1:05pm

X Derek Miller, Chair; President, Associated Students of UAF

A Amber Clarke, Vice President, PWSCC Student Association

X Mark Graves for Justin Whittington, Member, United Students of UAS-Juneau

X Casey Reynolds, Member, Union of Students of UAA

X Hilary Davies, Vice President, UAA Assembly, Member, UAA Faculty Senate

X David Woodley, President, UAA Assembly, Vice President, UAA Classified Council

X Pete Pinney, Vice President, UAF Faculty Senate

X Rory O'Neill for Larry Ledlow, President, UAF Staff Council

X Jim Hale, replaces Kevin Krein, UAS Faculty Senate

X John Mitchell, President, Statewide Administration Assembly

At 2:00pm: Robert Sewell, President UAS Staff Council; Chair, Staff Alliance

X Pat Ivey, Executive Officer

X Jamie Atkinson, USUAS-J

X Paul Jenny, Associate Director Budget and Institutional Research

1:05 2. Adopt agenda adopted without objection

1:07 3. Approve minutes adopted as amended

1:10 4. Chair's report

Busy here. Students facing 10 percent increase in tuition. Student leaders met with President Hamilton and Mike Sfraga and in process of sending out a survey with a two page attachment. Also in the process of conducting forums on each of the campuses.

Resigning from the Council because of other commitments.

1:20 5. Board of Regents/President’s items

5.1 Operating and Capital Budget Requests Paul Jenny

Operating: page 7 of the summary full request we asked for. We asked what the needed increment for the categories. Need 10.6 million just for existing staff. Inflationary and fixed costs skyrocketed. More insurance cost for less coverage. Existing and new facilities operating costs. TVC taking over the courthouse for a total of 16 million in fixed costs regardless of additional state funding or tuition increases. Looked at all the requests and presented three scenarios to the BOR. BOR decided to go with moderate proposal = $20 million including ASTF $2 million to the base. Additional increments for student services = $35 million from 611 million to 650 million including all funding sources.

Not included are some items that we need to be concerned about.

UAA facility, debt repayment, $2.3 ASTF if not funded by legis. Enrollment goal not met = $3 million. …..Staff benefits up to $2 million. Network bandwidth may have to pay for some of it.

In addition to request there is another $12 million in risks that need to be taken care of that are not in the budget.

Have there been any other budget scenarios offered with reduced tuition.

For every one percent reduction in tuition increase, that reduces the budget by $800,000. That amounts to a considerable comparison; what will it eliminate? Equivalent to operating the entire university center in Anchorage. It would take us $16 million in an endowment paying out at 5 percent to realize the $800,000.

Beedle:

The discussion in the regents meeting was

Can we have a differentiate between community campus and urban

Can we have need based availability of resources for those amounts. Currently the chancellors have up to 4 percent that they can waive, a value of $2 million that the chancellors can waive at their discretion.

The president will have to wrestle with how to raise that amount of money based on discussion with students.

Then define community campus and how can there be a difference in tuition. Discussed a 5 percent increase instead of 10 and how can a community campus deal with that.

Mark: If the idea that the community campuses get charged five percent instead of ten, what would the difference in revenue. Paul: It depends on the definition of community campuses. It would not work for lower division courses in general. It would not work if we said all 100 and 200 level courses. If it were only the community campuses off the road system and off the ferry system, you are looking only at about $100,000. It's also my fear that if you have a gap between what a pure bush campus could receive. They get to keep their tuition. The tuition flows to that campus. It might not impact them now but in about five years, the legislature is going to want to shut down one or more of those campuses. The cost of instruction would far outstrip the tuition revenue.

Reminder that the president has asked how many are developmental credits to get people ready for pure college courses.

Capital: Actually will do well if the GO bonds passes. Asked us to do a capital budget request based on what we honestly feel we can achieve. Looking at $280 over six years, down from 330 as originally proposed to BOR. We know that academic equipment planned on a two year cycle so we plugged in funds for that to meet BOR targets. With that in mind, we ranked just the fy04 priorities. That is the overview of how we got there; why some were included and some were not.

If GO bond doesn't pass, the capital budget blows up.

5.2 Bandwidth Priority Routing

Priority routing refers to the priorities in traffic that goes over the networks. ACS will provide connectivity in partnership with state. There are times bandwidth is impacted by large exchanges, music and videos can be downloaded. The bandwidth is a finite commodity and at some time in the future we will have to pay for the bandwidth and we need to establish priorities for the bandwidth in preparation for that. There needs to be an informed decision that we make as a university. As we reach a ceiling on the bandwidth we need to know how to prioritize that bandwidth.

Reference the 2page attachment, specifically the matrix. Looking for your input on how you prioritize the traffic. Call Steve Smith or contact nodies on the campus if you have any questions.

This is not going to be by popular vote; the decision will be made by management but we need to know what the users think so that when the decision has to be made we can make an informed decision.

There is no limitation on bandwidth usage except for copyright infractions or pornography. When we get to where we exceed the usage on the bandwidth contract, then we need to figure out a way to pay for that.

Putting some limits on residence hall usage at UAF.

Videoconference went down right about here.

GCI contracts for video bandwidth.

How do we share it for everyone. We have to reserve a portion for faculty advising, student services, student Banner. Access grid goes over the research network, not part of the bandwidth problem.

5.3 Tuition increases

Shared admin argument with faculty alliance this morning re: number of faculty hired = 264 since spring 1998 where the university needed to go. Went through BOR and SAC action items. 50 new programs. We have been able to put eight student services on line programs on line in past two years. Services, academic value of the institution is way up and we still need to hear from admin. Students should speak their point. The data points will be coalesced and distributed by the president widely.

Plan is to present to the Board of Regents, 3.6 percent is inflation. Real dollar increase over HEPI is 6.4 percent. Look forward to the dialogue and input. Going to the BOR November 12. Stand ready to participate in campus forums.

Hilary re faculty: were they new PCNs, replacements for faculty retired or vacated positions.

Response: These are net new faculty positions. The issue of PCN is personnel control numbers established by the state for state agencies including university. In past couple years, have not been held as strictly as other state agencies. WE get the budget in one number and then distribute it. WE trade PCNs around, depending on the need. We are not focusing on the pcn. WE are focusing on net new and not on the PCN. Hilary was asked to account for the PCNs I did not have down here. We still track it and Betty Dupee tracks that for the system office.

More dollars for students, improving access and flow of information. There has been dialog about decreasing the amount of the increase. Realize that for every one percent decrease, we loose about $800,000. Ten percent was put into place based on a number of decisions; that the legislature would commit a like amount; that we would increase enrollments.

Pinney asked if there was a parallel action within the foundation to establish need or merit-based resources for students. Diane Behrend very interested in helping out. At last ACPE meeting they said they wanted to revisit commitment of several years ago.

Behrends and Sfraga went to WICHE and didn't have anything to talk about. Lisa Villano is working on it. Derek visited with Wendy about it. Mark Graves is interested in it.

Hilary: a lot of universities have differentiated tuition based on high demand fields where students are expected to make a higher salary.

What other considerations have been made to lower tuition.

Beedle: AT UAA some of the engineering program management has a surcharge for the high demand industry paid and benefited programs.

Pres and BOR said that any program that wants a surcharge if SAC

says yes, the surcharge will be added.

Mike: talked to the faculty this morning about community colleges and we don't have the money available from the communities to support a differentiated tuition, lower for community campuses. When we keep differentiating urban/rural, upper/lower, graduate etc., it becomes an admin nightmare.

Out of state tuition, we are looking at other states and what is best for Alaska.

By raising from three percent to four percent the amount the chancellor can waive = $500,000.

Rory: shockedat the fees. Tuition covers 43 percent of instructional costs where national average is 70 percent. Has been real focus on reducing fees at UA. The campuses set fees. From 99-2001 number of courses with fees under $40 decreased by 40 percent. Above decreased by eleven percent.

Hilary noted that tutoring in the lab is $8 whereas private would be $25 per hour. At MSW we have a 50 percent surcharge for malpractice insurance and lab fees, distance ed fees etc. Fees are one of the places where it is very directly going to enhance students experience.

As tuition increases it will not be used to offset fees? Good point. Will be up to the chancellors. The increase will be a discretionary pot the chancellors can move around.

There is a difference between a fee attached to a course and it stays with the course.

Pinney said it is better for the student to have the tuition increases rather than the fees because of Pell Grant provisions etc.

Those fees by policy must be disclosed in the course syllabus and catalog as to what exactly the fee is for. Fees will always be there and we have to challenge fees to be sure they are being used for students.

5.4 Health care cost increases

Grown from 18 million in claims three years ago to 25 million today. We are self insured. Blue cross just pays the claims. We collect what we anticipate we will need from every one and if they go up higher, we have to get more from employees. The defined contribution from the university to each employee is a set amount, capped at 3 percent increase per year for inflation. When we experience increased costs, the increase is paid by the employee. The university has decided to try to average the costs. We are actually only biting off a chunk of what the costs actually are. We are paying the claims in hopes the contributions will catch up. Health care nationally went up 12-15 percent nationally. Drivers = aging, intensity, technology, diversity of practicioners, pharmacy costs. Direct marketingof pharmaceuticals is way up. Viox is number one used pharmaceutical, exceeds the Pepsi budget. Pharmaceutical companies court healthcare practicioners and market very effectively. In Alaska, there is a nursing labor shortage. Have to import them and pay to attract and retain.

Done pretty much everything we can do with plan design. Our accounting model is a retrospective model. Total difference this year is $4 million, $3 million for non represented staff and ua has paid it from reserves earmarked for other needs. Since we have incurred this debt there is nothing we can do to mitigate these costs. If we go to a projection model, we might be able to do things to the plan design to make it more affordable, maybe do a flex plan and provide options.

There are a lot of rumors out there. The big question is what the dependent charge going to be. The current model won't work. We need another model for this. Need to find something to reduce the oscillation

Robert Sewell: Staff Alliance met four times special meeting on the subject. Matter of extreme concern. Calculations on cost over run is $3 million to pay this next calendar year. Thatis a figure that comes to 91 per employee irrespective of number of dependents. The UA dependent care contribution is the same as that for employees. That is a figure that is truly worrisome for the membership.

Staff Alliance concluded two key things. One is that we need to hear more from the constituents and after considerable discussion with many folks, will seek a referendum from the classified and apt and will have it by October 14. Second thing is we asked the staff councils to take up the questions and formally act on them.

Issues of substance are several but don't key in to the current discussion. The current issues are

What portion of the overrun should the university pay versus what the employee should pay pays. BOR policy doesn't bear on this. (from tape)

Should the same charge be charged all employees or prorated?

How should dependent charges be handled?

No doubt the medical rates inflating. The dept of labor said it is

4 percent per annum for the past four years, significantly smaller

than has been presented. Both the general and the medical CPI is

going up and the defined contributions don't match those figures. The general CPI has been 2.8 percent per year. Staff grid has not kept up with inflation. On July 16 we asked for a 2 percent increase for fy04. Seriously disappointed

Should the Alliance seek the 2.0 percent increase for the fy04 budget.

Should the BOR policy be adjusted to include a CPI indicator for grid adjustments. The Staff Alliance intends to have answers to this on October 14.

Joe Beedle indicated that Mike and Janet will propose to the president tomorrow for enrollment packets that will go out next week. The decision will be reached before the BOR meeting in November and certainly before December on the cost sharing. It is a management decision, not the BORs. It is a question of the deadlines for open enrollment.

Costs for employees in ua have risen regardless of what the Anchorage CPI says. Will have a decision that won't be the worst fear but will be an increase.

Robert: Cost of living by Neil Freid shows increases. Organizations of all sorts are worried about the rapid exceleration over the next four years. UA costs ran in month of July 2.4 million for the months. June ran 2.2 million per month and it is much higher than last year.

In coming months we need to take a look at these drivers.

Up until this meeting, we were lead to believe that we had until October 16 to provide input. Robert.

Beedle there is no scenario that the university will adjust this year more than three percent and nothing different at this point.

Robert Still wondering that October 14 is past the deadline; it is not the right signal.

Mike and Janet are gathering the executive officers tomorrow and president will make the decision next week. It is our goal to get you a number next week. President will probably consider any input up to time Mike goes to press.

5.5 Other items of concern

1:50 6. Survey of legislative and gubernatorial candidates

2:05 7. Election of the chair Attachment 7

Moved to November 14.

2:15 8. System governance group reports

8.1. Coalition of Student Leaders - had retreat with President Hamilton; tuition and legislative campaign coming up by end of October.

8.2 Faculty Alliance met this morning, October 11 retreat, resolutions that don't go anywhere when they get to the president.

8.3 Staff Alliance - John Mitchell - SA involved with healthcare issues and the grid increase, classification project and appeals process

8.4 Alumni associations November 1 retreat; boards are meeting tomorrow to outline topics.

2:30 9. Local governance reports

9.1 UAA - GERs and technology fees, distance ed

9.2 UAF - ASUAF retreat this weekend establish goals for rest of year, searchingfor new vice president. UAF Staff Council working on nondiscrimination policy and working with other governance groups to effect campus environment. Possible reduction in workforce at the GI and self assessment for staff governance to measure effectiveness. Pinney, UAF senate hot topic gubernatorial debates moved from closed to open forum.

9.3 UAS

9.4 Statewide - indoor air quality, parking, healthcare, classification project re parking; people who pay for teleconference don't have a place to park. Ditto employees for Bor meetings in Fairbanks.

2:45 10. Agenda items for next meeting/President’s retreat

November 14, 2002, Fairbanks

Tuition, healthcare, operating and capital budget requests, full funding campaign and how to coordinate with faculty, staff and students and alumni on how to go to Juneau and lobby together, and the election of a new chair.

2:55 10. Comments

3:00 12. Adjourn at 3:10