President’s
Memo
to
Management
Group

March
26,
2014
As you know, every year Financial Services meets with each budget manager and their Dean or Director toconduct a thorough review of budgets. Together they discuss any projected variances from the approvedbudget, as well as engage in analysis and business assessment to determine how we will look financially atyear end.The review of managers’ detailed projections to June 30, 2014 is now complete for the entire College and a $2million shortfall has been identified. This projection is made up of many variances throughout the College, bothpositive and negative.The College operates with a total budget of close to $175 million and although this shortfall amounts to lessthan 2% of our overall budget, it is still a substantial dollar amount that we have to mitigate. We cannot end theyear in a deficit position.The operating budget for the College is completed several months prior to the start of the academic year.Significant work goes into developing the annual operating budget; it is an in-depth and necessarily timeconsuming process. As many of you are involved in this process, you will know that despite the thoroughnessof our collective work, unforeseen circumstance arise and sometimes not all goes as planned.More often than not our mid-year projections have revealed savings and our year end budget was easilybalanced. Even with a balanced projection in February, the College often realized a surplus by June 30. Thatbeing said, there were occasional years that Managers were asked to seriously consider their budgets and limitspending in the last quarter of the fiscal year. This is one of those years.I am reaching out to all of you to request that wherever possible you minimize expense in your areas. Thisincludes delaying the hiring of new staff wherever possible, reducing expenditures on materials and supplies,and minimizing travel. No one likes to be told to reduce their budget and situations are different in everydepartment so we are asking for a voluntary commitment across the College at this time. Every month of thisfiscal year we had a positive variance to budget including February, so I believe if we are careful we cancomplete the year without a deficit.At the next Management Group Gathering scheduled for April 9th, we will provide more information about thisprojected shortfall, and bring an update on where we are in our efforts to eliminate this projected deficit. Wewill also spend some time collectively discussing budget strategies going forward.My many thanks in advance for your help!Stephanie