FORT KENT — Amid ongoing financial pressures, the University of Maine System can cut millions of dollars by consolidating and reorganizing its human resources services, officials told the board of trustees Sunday.

It’s the latest initiative aimed at reducing costs at UMS, which faces a projected $69 million deficit in 2019.

On Monday, the trustees will discuss several other financial matters, including the elimination of three academic programs at the University of Southern Maine and the decision to ask state legislators to increase the amount of state funding.

“We spend a lot of money to ride a bicycle, but we’re going to save money driving a car,” Chief Human Resources Officer Lynda Dec said, describing the system’s planned HR upgrade.

Today, she said, system HR services are too spread out and reliant on older technology and processes. Outsourcing some functions and consolidating others, she said, will save the system $3.9 million over the next five years, and cut the HR department head count from 72 people to 61.

The proposed HR reorganization follows similar consolidation and cost-saving measures in other systemwide departments, including information technology.

But in addition to those cuts, the system needs more revenue, officials say. The system is asking the state to increase funding by 3.4 percent, from $176.2 million to $182.2 million, for the fiscal year ending June 2016. In the second year of the state’s biennial budget – ending in June 2017 – they are asking for an increase of 3.8 percent, or $189.1 million.

“It’s going to be difficult” to get the increase, said Ryan Low, interim vice president for administration and finance at the University of Maine in Orono. But operating costs are increasing at about 3.3 percent annually.

If UMS does not get the increase, the trustees might raise tuition, Low said.

The latest system budget of $529 million, approved in May, cut 157 positions and required $11.4 million in emergency funds to close a $36 million deficit. Without changes, the deficit will grow to $69 million by 2019, officials project.

Currently, state funding brings in 34 percent of the system’s operating budget, and tuition brings in 42 percent.

In inflation-adjusted figures, Maine’s education appropriation per full-time equivalent student has dropped 15 percent over the last five years, from $7,027 to $5,978, according to a national survey and analysis by the State Higher Education Executive Officer Association.

Low said the amount of the request is the equivalent of increasing both tuition and state funding by the consumer price index, currently 1.7 percent.

Also Monday, the trustees will decide whether to cut USM’s American and New England studies graduate program, geosciences, and the arts and humanities major at Lewiston-Auburn College, which is part of USM.

If the three programs are cut, no new students would be allowed to enroll, but current students would still be able to get their degrees at USM, with the programs and their seven faculty members being phased out as demand decreases.

As of June 11, there were 57 students majoring in American and New England Studies, 61 students majoring in arts and humanities in Lewiston and 47 students majoring in geosciences, officials said. USM has a total enrollment of 8,923 students at its Portland, Gorham and Lewiston campuses.

The cuts, first proposed in the spring, led to student and faculty protests, including a march through downtown Portland. In recent weeks, student leaders have criticized the trustees for holding the vote on the programs in Fort Kent, so far from the USM campus.

The trustees will also be briefed on the current financial situation at USM from interim USM President David Flanagan, who was appointed this summer and faces a $15 million gap in the upcoming budget.

This year, USM officials needed $7 million in emergency one-time system funds to close a $14 million gap in the school’s $134 million budget for the fiscal year that began July 1. Flanagan said he would lay out his strategy to close the current gap by January, when he presents the school’s budget to the trustees.

Copy the Story Link