Securing Our Financial Future

by Bonnie M. Patterson, President and Vice-Chancellor

[The following is an excerpt from the 2001/02 budget introduction document. We print it here as a follow-up to last month's description of the University's budget challenges.]

We will have a balanced budget. A plan has been successfully implemented as the first step to secure our financial future. Our budget challenges are not over. Solutions are needed to address areas of underinvestment and structural issues that remain. In bringing forward a balanced budget for 2001/2 and projections into the future, you see solid improvements in both our annual operating budget and consequently our cumulative deficit position. We know there is much work to be done in many areas. In the April retreat of the Board, we will present as requested, a Preliminary Framework to Manage the Cumulative Deficit. In 1998, the cumulative deficit in our operating budget was forecasted to be over $9m at the end of this fiscal year. In keeping with the focus on doing "better than forecasted" each year within the Plan for Recovery, the projected cumulative deficit at the end of this year will be about $7.8m, still a formidable challenge, but a better position than anticipated.

- Trent's Board of Governors on April 27 approved an operating budget of $44,125,000; the first balanced budget presented to the Board by administration in five years - Although the announcement of next year's grants is still pending after the May 9 provincial budget, Trent is projecting at this time a surplus of $54,000 for the next fiscal year. - "This budget is a strong indicator to the communities we serve that Trent University is getting its financial house in order," says Board Chair Gary Wolff. "Trent is back on the right track towards more financial stability."

We do not suggest that our budget, as outlined in these materials, represents our only challenges. In many ways our success in research and graduate programming, curricular reform, the fund raising campaign and capital expansion put increased pressures on us to find ways of appropriately managing an enormous array of activities. The "human" costs associated with the financial pressures we face are visible and it is clear that staff and faculty are doing more with less. We will need to face some additional difficult decisions as we move forward and it may well be that we cannot do everything that we do now or would like to do in the future. For sure, change will be an ever occurring part of our journey at Trent ­ not a profound statement, merely an observation. It does continue to be our hope that some relief and opportunities will present themselves as government responds to the necessity of new investments in post secondary education in the province.

We are most grateful and indeed fortunate that people at Trent care. Our students and graduates continue to substantiate how valuable their learning experiences are, and they do well in their places of work after Trent. There is much to be proud of at Canada's Outstanding Small University but much more to be done!