Prince George, B.C. – The 2015-16 UNBC budget was approved by the Board of Governors this morning.

UNBC President Dr. Daniel Weeks – photo 250 News

“We’ve just approved a balanced budget which we’re required to by the province of British Columbia,” said Board Chair John Turner. “It doesn’t mean we don’t have some challenges in the budget but we’ve asked administration to deal with those directly and they’ll bring a plan to the board to deal with structural deficiencies we see in the upcoming years.”

Those structural deficiencies include a projected deficit of $3.7 million for 2016-17 which president Dr. Daniel Weeks says will be dealt with through the development of “some new strategies.”

“One of the strategies already underway is to ensure the budget development is fully aligned with academic planning,” he said. “This process is being refined this year to allow more comprehensive budget consultation and planning to begin this fall.”

The $75 million budget was balanced through a number of actions, including:

– A one-time elimination of allocations to reserves that have sufficient balances to maintain activities at the same level as previous years.

– A temporary decrease to the utilities budget based on last year’s results.

– A temporary increase to the revenue line related to investment income based on prior years’ returns.

– Tuition fee increases of 2%

The Board confirmed they will not be axing outgoing Vice President, External Relations Rob van Adrichem’s position to save money.

“No cuts are envisioned right now,” said Weeks. “In fact it would be somewhat irresponsible to even talk about that. We need to go through a planning exercise that really looks at what our budget needs to serve.”

He also said a pending decision by an arbitrator this fall won’t break the bank.

“Any increases that will come through a collective agreement (with faculty) are already built into our budget. We are funded for these increases by government so we’re not in a worrisome mode there.”

Weeks did allude to future challenges however.

“We almost had a perfect storm this year in some ways. Enrolments are down, we’re in the third year of some anticipated cuts to our government funding and then of course we have some increasing costs we have to deal with,” said Weeks. “We have to do things to prepare ourselves but it’s at a head and we have to get a little more aggressive in how we deal with that.”