On Thursday morning, we held a joint meeting with the Board of Trustees Academic Affairs and Financial Affairs Committees to update them on our progress and planning for next year's budget. I want to provide the community with a summary of the information we presented to the Board.

We now have a better understanding for the critical aspects of the 2012 budget. We anticipate that CSU's allocation for state share of instruction will be $62 million, which represents a decrease of $11 million or 15 percent. In addition, we will not receive $12 million that had been requested in the capital budget for critical building maintenance. This means that many of these maintenance issues that would have been funded by the capital budget would need to be funded from other sources.

In his budget proposal, Gov. Kasich also proposed a tuition cap of 7 percent over the next two fiscal years. While we are exploring various tuition options, we are very mindful of the potential effects tuition costs have on students, and we need to balance those concerns with providing a high quality education. We are also mindful that there will be an $8.00 per credit hour increase to cover operating and construction costs for the new Student Center and Recreation Center.

Earlier this year, academic colleges, academic support and university support were given targets to reduce their budgets between 8 to 15 percent. Those plans have been submitted and reviewed. While all of the units provided plans to cover the deficit in the next biennium, the savings needed cannot be realized immediately. Therefore, we are exploring option to use university reserves to provide a funding bridge. On the academic side, it is our goal to absorb the cuts without impacting the number of courses offered to our students.

On May 2, a full budget presentation will be made to the Board of Trustees. Prior to that presentation, we will hold an Open Forum on April 29, 2011 at noon to share with you the information that will be presented to the Board on May 2 and seek your input. After that presentation, we will make a formal recommendation to the Board's Financial Affairs Committee on May 17. Pending legislative passage of the state budget, we will ask the Board of Trustees to approve the 2012 budget on its June 28 meeting.

I believe that the process we began one year ago has prepared us to make the adjustments necessary to meet the financial goals while continuing to make progress on the University's strategic plan.

Thank you for your patience, continued hard work, and belief in the future of CSU.