DULUTH — University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel is asking the university system to pay off $6.8 million in debt at the Duluth campus — though it won't affect the $5.2 million in budget cuts set to take affect next year.
"It will help to put them on a much firmer financial foundation for the future so that they can begin their strategic planning … with a fresh start," Gabel told the Board of Regents Friday morning.
UMD has not had a balanced budget since 2011, when enrollment started to decline. Its budget deficits have accumulated to about $6.8 million.
Chancellor Lendley Black said he was "extremely pleased" to get this so-called sequestered deficit wiped out.
"President Gabel has indicated over the past few months that she will partner with UMD to address our budget challenges," Black said. "It is clear that she recognizes the difficult budgetary decisions we have made at UMD to balance our recurring (operations and maintenance) expenses and revenues."
UMD administrators announced last week the School of Fine Arts would merge with the College of Liberal Arts and dozens of jobs would be lost and positions removed across campus as part of the 3% annual operations spending decrease. The UMD faculty senate has called the school merger "an extreme plan to save less than half a million dollars annually."
Twenty-nine faculty and staff will be cut or reduced, along with 13 graduate teaching assistant positions, while more than 30 jobs will be eliminated through closing open positions and early retirements.
The cuts, which take effect in July, are meant to address a $5.2 million "structural" deficit that had ballooned to $9.4 million in 2014.
Faculty leaders and legislators have argued the university system needs to spend more on the Duluth campus — on a per-pupil basis the Twin Cities campus gets twice as much funding.
Rep. Jennifer Schultz, DFL-Duluth, said Friday while she was glad to see Gabel lend a hand to UMD, she wants to work on "a new budget model to address current inequities in allocating state funding and administrative costs across collegiate units and campuses."
Gabel previously told UMD officials that slower budget reductions would not suffice.
"With the budget reductions announced last week, UMD has taken difficult but necessary steps to balance the annual structural imbalance," Gabel said in a statement Friday. "Eliminating this debt allows for new investments and next chapters to truly focus on the future."
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