Budget Overview

Essentially, this is a maintenance of current operations budget with some slight increases in scope for the first full year of occupying the SEC.   Most of the increased costs are all triggered by mandatory cost increases that are out of our control. The professional staff salaries appear larger than expected because the FY 15 line items in each index are out of date by two payroll changes.   First, the March 2014 Sibson adjustments were funded out of net cash, as per SIFC instructions, so those costs are showing in the FY 16 budget for the first time.   Secondly, the SIFC chose to place the 3% merit pool for unclassified staff in a single entry in the MUNADM index, rather than having us distribute that funding to each index.   This makes the difference between the FY 15 and FY 16 Unclassified salaries in each index appear far larger than it truly is.   All salary adjustments were done within the guidelines provided and the instructions given by SIFC and by Central Administration.

The SEC was budgeted for a half-year of operation only in 2014-15 and for FY 16, the SEC will operate for a full 12-months. However, significant reduction in funding for MU East has an off-setting impact in the SEC index, but cost impacts of a larger base of operation are felt organization-wide and appear in many indexes. Some adjustment of over/under budgeted line items has occurred throughout the budget in order to adjust projections to be more in line with actual expenses.   Decision packages are included and addressed in the section of the report held for this purpose.

In an attempt to off-set some of the inflationary cost increases, MU revenues have been increased by nearly 12% with an overall increase in expense of about 5.5%.   The net effect in the base budget is a 4.8% increase to maintain current operations.   Approval of all six decision packages would add an addition 2.9% increase.

Contacts: Michael Henthorne, Director and Victoria Redman, MU President