[CED] FW: Budget Information

Fri Feb 10 10:51:39 MST 2012

Hi,

I saw that my concern on staff funding and possible options for relief was
placed on the February agenda. I thought it would be well to forward you the
following that I sent to Dean Sander at his request in 2007. The question
is, "Without staff support, what will the new model for Extension in AZ be?"
Also, "Without staff support, are we laying the groundwork for
organizational implosion for Arizona Cooperative Extension?"

An update to what is below is in order. In 2007, Gila County reduced staff
support over two offices (San Carlos is funded separately from our offices
in Globe and Payson) to 1.75 FTE. Since then, we have reduced staff support
to 1.5 FTE. On the current trajectory, within two to three years, we will
have to reduce staff support over two offices to 0.5 to 0.75 FTE. I feel
this is unsustainable. We will be laying the framework for our own demise. A
question I raised with Dean Sander below is important enough I have pasted
it here also just in case you don't want to read the lengthy epistle below.

We seem to have moved into a whole new pardigm for Cooperative Extension,
namely:

We will pay your salary, but take your choice - do you want staff support or
do you want to have travel and operational dollars to do your job? 

If we do away with staff, why maintain Extension Offices and why should we
expect the Counties to continue to fund us in a cooperative fashion? We
could be talking about people working out of their homes with very little
county support and very limited central administration support. However,
everything now requires more time with new University accounting/reporting
procedures that have been established. If an Extension Agent were to work
out of their home with no staff assistance, then he/she would be spending at
least 40 to 50% of their time just performing clerical duties. In essence,
we would be building a case for our own demise.

Thanks,

Jim Sprinkle
Area Extension Agent, Animal Science &
Gila County Cooperative Extension Director
P. O. Box 2844
Payson, Arizona 85547
928-474-4160 phone
928-468-8289 fax
email: sprinkle at ag.arizona.edu
http://ag.arizona.edu/gila/animalsciences

  _____  

From: Jim Sprinkle [mailto:sprinkle at ag.arizona.edu] 
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 03:41 PM
To: 'Eugene Sander'
Cc: jim (jimc at ag.arizona.edu)
Subject: RE: Budget Information

Dr. Sander,

You asked for my input on the budget cut as CED for Gila County. I have
tried to view things in a futuristic fashion and be as honest as possible.

1.  Budget Cut Impacts: How you will take your cuts at the target levels, as
well as assessments of the consequences, both near term and strategic.

As you know, we have limited freedom of choice for discretionary cuts after
paying for our two full time staff in Gila County. We are unable to operate
without staff support and they are already stretched thin with the workload
they experience. After paying salaries for our two staff employees, we have
$13,060 in discretionary funding from state dollars. Additonally, we no
longer receive money to cover our postage, so $2,500 needs to be deducted
from the above $13,060, leaving a balance of $10,560. Agent
travel/operations (unless significant external grant funds are obtained)
costs approximately $19,000 for the 3 county faculty funded by state dollars
administered by the College of Agriculture. Our county funding provides
office space and much of the operational funding we need to keep our offices
open (copies, vehicle maintenance, phones, supplies, temporary help,
internet service, etc.). I feel that is very important to allow county
faculty to have the travel and operations budget they need to fund their
travel and programming efforts. To do otherwise, limits our effectives and
destroys employee morale. The most important thing that our faculty do and
the thing they are hired to do is to provide research based educational
programs for agriculture/natural resources and youth. I feel that our
strategic plan has been to assume that the state will provide faculty with
the travel budget they need to do their job and that the county will provide
operational dollars to keep our offices open and functioning. This
partnership has worked very well in the past and is in line with the Arizona
Revised Statutes for Extension work. 

Agents travel and present programs at least two or three days a week. To
maintain county support, it is important that our Payson and Globe Extension
offices remain open during regular business hours to service clientele. To
accomplish this mandate, we must maintain two full time staff employees. We
also need these two employees to assist agents in programming efforts. One
employee works mostly full time in maintaining accounts/P-card
reconciliations/reports etc. and the other employee maintains our Web site,
assists in correspondence and fliers, and other secretarial duties. We
occasionally bring in part on-call time help on either grant dollars or
county dollars to handle work overflow. 

With this recent 3% budget cut ($7,000, but really $9,500 with postage cut),
our ability to function effectively has been compromised. The budget cut is
roughly equivalent to losing .25 FTE for staff support. In order to continue
to fund faculty travel in order for them to do their jobs, we either have to
subsidize faculty travel with county dollars or cut one staff employee from
1.0 to 0.75 FTE. I do not wish to reduce our staff FTE's as we need both
employees full time and to do a partial layoff would send a signal that I do
not wish sent. Last year we asked the county for a modest increase to
accommodate increased operational expenses. They did fund our request.
However, the above cut will require us to use over 22% of our county budget
to help fund agent travel and postage. I don't think I need to tell you that
this is a huge impact to our operational efficiency. 

For the 2007-2008 fiscal year, we do have some accumulated savings from
grant dollars that have spared our county operational dollars. We will
mostly use these funds up to cover this 3% budget cut. However, we have a
high mileage vehicle (over 140,000 miles) used by the area agent/regional
specialist that will need to be replaced. I hope we can receive some
temporary dollar matching from CALS to pay a 50% match for this vehicle. If
so, we can withstand this challenge to our funding for a couple of years. If
a match on the vehicle does not occur, we will need to absorb the
approximately $20,000 to $25,000 from our accumulated savings. Adding this
amount to the approximately $10,000 cut from CALS will reduce our emergency
reserves to approximately $4,000 to $5,000. This reserve will not allow us
to continue down this same road for another year without downsizing our
support staff. 

I should justify the expense of maintaining a vehicle for the Area Extension
Agent/Regional Specialist. He travels approximately 30,000 miles per year in
performance of his duties. If mileage were to be paid, travel expenses per
year for driving alone would be $13,350. It is more cost effective to pay
fuel costs and maintenance for a state owned vehicle. This allows the Area
Agent to stay within the constraints of a limited travel budget. 

I need to mention two other effects of this budget cut. In 2003 and 2006, we
funded a student Extension intern (with county dollars), primarily to assist
with our Reading the Range program. This has been a valuable experience for
the interns and has provided us with some excellent support. It has also
exposed these interns to future employment possibilities with Extension. We
will be unable to continue sponsoring an intern unless we receive grant
dollars. I have not mentioned that we have a federally funded Extension
program on the San Carlos Reservation. We have had to help prop up this
program with some small expenses that USDA and the San Carlos Tribe and CALS
will not fund (such as air conditioner service). We will no longer be able
to do this and CALS will need to pick up these type of expenses. 

What are the repercussions? With this additional cut, we have set in motion
a cascade of events. Should the funding we lost not be restored in
2008-2009, we may have to cut our staff to 1.75 FTE. This has the
possiblility of eroding our base of support with the county due to reduced
clientele service and increased dissatisfaction (e. g., no one at the
Extension office and a locked door when stopping by). This could reduce our
funds futher as clientele complain to the Board of Supervisors. Employee
morale will suffer as staff become insecure about job security. Some
employees may leave to find full time employment, requiring training new
employees. Support for faculty will be reduced and they will have to curtail
programming to perform jobs that used to be accomplished by staff. As
programming is curtailed, further dissatisfaction by clientele may be
communicated to County administrators (e. g., the Extension Agents just want
to spend their time in the office instead of doing educational programming).
Statewide, clientele support will be eroded, making it much more difficult
to secure funding from the legislature as we did for the 1.5 million
decision package. I think it is very important to the University to maintain
the base level of support they now currently enjoy in many Arizona
communities. This is not just a one time 3% budget reduction we are talking
about, it is a slippery slope for organizational implosion, with potential
to cascade to the College of Agriculture and the University of Arizona.

We seem to have moved into a whole new pardigm for Cooperative Extension,
namely:

We will pay your salary, but take your choice - do you want staff support or
do you want to have travel and operational dollars to do your job? 

If we do away with staff, why maintain Extension Offices and why should we
expect the Counties to continue to fund us in a cooperative fashion? We
could be talking about people working out of their homes with very little
county support and very limited central administration support. However,
everything now requires more time with new University accounting/reporting
procedures that have been established. If an Extension Agent were to work
out of their home with no staff assistance, then he/she would be spending at
least 40 to 50% of their time just performing clerical duties. In essence,
we would be building a case for our own demise.

2.  Incentive Structures: Provide a description of what incentive structures
would be appealing to your department that would help move your department
towards its strategic position.

I see no incentives at all with the current situation. It's going to hurt,
just how much can we stand? We have been trimmed so much over the last few
years, how can we accommodate this budget cut and possibly another cut after
this one? Without some significant infusion of grant monies, we need to
evaluate how we can even function as a unit. As has been said, we are no
longer cutting fat, we are cutting muscle. 

In my opinion, we have a problem that needs fixing. The state has extra
dollars and they should help fix the problem they created when they quit
funding ERE. Why not educate them on what this is doing to the University of
Arizona and other Universities and ask them to act responsibly? 

If we are to be a top ten research institution as has been suggested, we can
not continue down this road. If Cooperative Extension implodes, it is
possible for CALS and the University of Arizona to follow, or at least to be
far less effective. I suggest that instead of focusing on continual budget
cuts, we educate the legislature about the effects of their short sighted
decision to fail to fund employee ERE. When 80 to 90% or more of our budget
is involved in salaries, it leaves little room for operational cost
reductions. The legislature should fix the problem they created. 

Thanks,

Jim Sprinkle
Area Extension Agent, Animal Science &
Gila County Cooperative Extension Director
P. O. Box 2844
Payson, Arizona  85547
928-474-4160 phone
928-468-8289 fax
email: sprinkle at ag.arizona.edu
http://ag.arizona.edu/gila/animalsciences

  _____  

From: Eugene Sander [mailto:egsander at Ag.arizona.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 2:55 PM
To: rallen at Ag.arizona.edu; jalves at Ag.arizona.edu; bierner at Ag.arizona.edu;
campbell at Ag.arizona.edu; jimc at Ag.arizona.edu; dcox at Ag.arizona.edu;
jdavis at Ag.arizona.edu; elliot at Ag.arizona.edu; dfish at Ag.arizona.edu;
cflynn at Ag.arizona.edu; gibsonrd at Ag.arizona.edu; grumbles at Ag.arizona.edu;
lisag at Ag.arizona.edu; jghiller at Ag.arizona.edu; houtkoop at u.arizona.edu;
husman at Ag.arizona.edu; chuck at Ag.arizona.edu; kltnbch at Ag.arizona.edu;
aker at Ag.arizona.edu; lauxman at Ag.arizona.edu; plshead at Ag.arizona.edu;
lmasters at Ag.arizona.edu; smegdal at Ag.arizona.edu; gmoore at Ag.arizona.edu;
rnorton at Ag.arizona.edu; spater at Ag.arizona.edu; mproctor at arizona.edu;
bobroth at Ag.arizona.edu; sanchez at Ag.arizona.edu; dschafer at Ag.arizona.edu;
jschalau at Ag.arizona.edu; jschmitz at u.arizona.edu; shim at Ag.arizona.edu;
silver at Ag.arizona.edu; slackd at u.arizona.edu; sperr at Ag.arizona.edu;
sprinkle at Ag.arizona.edu; vestein at Ag.arizona.edu; brucet at Ag.arizona.edu;
garyt at Ag.arizona.edu; tucker at Ag.arizona.edu; djyoung at Ag.arizona.edu
Subject: Budget Information

CALS Unit Heads,

A number of you have asked the Executive Council questions about our budget
situation since we asked the HODs to address the possibility of budget cuts
at the 1.5% and 3% levels.

You'll remember that we've been pushing the limits of our CALS budget for a
number of years to hire faculty and maintain programs in the wake of budget
cuts and unfunded obligations imposed by the legislature. We initially
announced the reductions in technician funding (10% for each of the last two
years) to address that problem. However, at the same time that we were
trying to deal with those problems, the university decided they needed our
help in addressing additional budget shortfalls at the institutional level.
So, in each of the last two years, we applied the money that we'd gathered
up from the technician cuts to the university-imposed budget reductions.
Further, we've been exhausting all our one-time balances to make ends meet
in the college, trying to hang on until the university gets through their
budget stabilization plan. The Executive Council doesn't want to cut
technicians or GTAs/GRAs any further; but that decision hasn't been made
yet, and won't be made until we know the size of the budget reduction that
will be levied upon us. What we do know is that CALS cannot sustain our
current level of personnel/ere expenditures on budgeted funds; and we cannot
continue to fund a multi-million dollar list of temporary and
almost-permanent commitments. With each successive budget reduction, we lose
more of our permanent funding base, so we have fewer dollars at the college
level to meet our commitments--funding positions, providing matching on
grants and bridge funding for people between grants, providing startup
packages, funding building and renovation projects, paying utilities,
addressing equity and retention issues, and addressing other needs. At the
same time, the needs just keep growing--we understand that, because we know
your budgets are being reduced as well. We just don't have the resources to
fix the problems.

For planning purposes, we're suggesting you assume no further college cuts
in technicians; and GRA/GTA allocations from the college equal to those you
received last year. (Remember, this is not a guarantee.) With that as a
starting point, plan how you'd come up with the 1.5% and 3% budget reduction
numbers. A few points of clarification on the plans--If it's your decision
to cut technicians or GAs further as part of your plan, that's OK. Also, you
can't use positions recently removed from the hiring plan to satisfy your
cuts. For purposes of this exercise, if you intend to use a retirement to
generate the funds for your reduction, remember the position is eliminated
forever and you don't get the keep the monies in excess of the amount of
your reduction if it's a line that would normally revert to the college for
redistribution.

Below are two items that I will be asked to discuss when I have my budget
meeting with the Provost.  It would be helpful for you as department heads
and directors to include your answers to these questions so that I may
incorporate them in CALS response.

1.  Budget Cut Impacts: How you will take your cuts at the target levels, as
well as assessments of the consequences, both near term and strategic.

2.  Incentive Structures: Provide a description of what incentive structures
would be appealing to your department that would help move your department
towards its strategic position.

Gene

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