The revised budget is out

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As predicted, $4.6Bn instead of the $3.7 they were talking about earlier. What does that mean for me and Western? In the words of two of my bosses today:
For our state, revenues are currently projected to fall around 10% short of projected state expenditures. The magnitude of the shortfall is estimated to be about $4.6 billion. Since about half the state"s budget is protected from reductions through constitutional or other means, to make up the 10% shortfall would require an average of a 20% reduction in the rest of the state agency budgets. We are in that latter category of state agencies whose budgets, on average, would have to be reduced by 20%.

Just what does that mean for Western? The 20% reduction is in the 60% of our budget that comes from state support. So, it"s 12% of our operating budget.
So, expect a 12% cut to the budget. Right. Can't we just raise tuition?
If tuition were raised to the maximum currently allowed by law (7% per year) for resident undergraduates, the additional funds would reduce the magnitude of the cut to something in the neighborhood of 8.7% of our operating budget.
Still pretty hefty. However, the Legislature still has a full session to go over the budget, and it still has to be signed. Who knows what'll change between now and when Session ends. However, the prudent fiscal planner will be looking for cuts up to 12% of operating budget.

More close to home:
Second, [the President] has asked us to prepare scenarios about how we might respond to a 2%, 3.8%, and 5% permanent reduction for the next biennium.
So it isn't terribly likely that ITS, much less Technical Services, will be asked to whack 12% of operating budget. This is a good thing to this selfish person. 12% of operating budget for Tech Services would be people, since I'm pretty sure the sum total of our non-salary expenses is less than 10% of our budget. Whew.

Still, this is going to put a major lid on purchases for the next 3 years. Within that period our blade servers fall off warranty, which is going to incur certain replacement expenses (almost definitely for new ESX cluster nodes). On the other hand, it gives me a really good line to use for cold-calling vendors...

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Dude, that sucks. It's hard enough to get people to spend money on infrastructure under the best of circumstances! Well, I hope you've held on to all that old hardware that wasn't good enough for Windows. Linux will run on that same hardware pretty well. Show 'em how much you can do with nothing. Get creative. You'll be remembered when things take a turn back for the better!