Within just of few hours of each other, the Governor signed the bill for Eastern’s Renewable Energy Center followed by the Board of Trustees with their own approval of the project on Monday.

Cameron Schilling, Legislative Advisor to Governor Pat Quinn and a 2006 graduate of Eastern, returned to Eastern and took the podium in front of the Board of Trustees with a message from the governor.

“The General Assembly sent us these bills late last week. Technically we have 60 days to act on them, but we want to get this moving as fast as we can,” Schilling said.

President William Perry described this project as a sustainable solution to a long-standing problem.

“It gives us a renewable energy center that generates steam and some electricity and power for the campus,” Perry said. “It includes energy conservation measures across the campus, produces cleaner energy, presents a teaching and research opportunity for our faculty and staff, and generates cost savings in the short and long run.”

Paul McCann, vice president for business affairs, gave a power point presentation explaining the center in all of its aspects from the design to the finances, and everything in between.

The current steam plant, which was built in the 1920’s, has cost the university about $16 million in deferred maintenance.

“This just gets it back up to where it can efficiently in 1920’s technology, what we would like to do with this project is bring us into the next century,” McCann said.

McCann explained they will have to buy the 2-inch woodchips to fuel the plant from the Terra Haute area, but in the future they are hoping to be able to use resources from the local area.

“Eventually what we would hope we would be able to do is turn this into, instead of a woodchip burner, we could do it with agricultural materials, like corn husks and corn cobs,” McCann said. “Turn it into something our local farmer can produce.”

The center will now be sent to the Board of Higher Education for their approval.

In other business, the budget for the 2010 fiscal year was approved.

The total expenditure for the year will be just under $200 million, McCann said.

The projected budget will be $51,403,000 from state general appropriations.

The income fund, including tuition and fees, is projected to be $55,014,000.

“This number is down a little bit from 2009,” McCann said. “We are trying to be conservative on that number, trying to make sure we are not over counting the number of students.”

A few major changes have been made to the budget compared to previous years.

One of these changes will include a decrease within the student services line item and an increase in the auxiliary funds line item.

“The reason being is so we can move the textbook rental service from (student services) down to auxiliary enterprises,” McCann said.

Board member Don Yost was pleased with budget for the fiscal year of 2010.

“Given the times and circumstances we live in, I think it is a pretty solid budget,” Yost said.

The temporary budget for the fiscal year of 2011 was also presented to the board.

“The state requires us to present to the Board of Higher Education our wish list for the 2011 year,” McCann said. “These things are due to the Board of Higher Education and the September time frame, and we still need to give our budget staff time to look at what our wish list looks like.”

Certain items will be increased within the 2011 budget.

Based on the economy and inflation, a 4 percent increase of salary is projected, including faculty, which would be entering into a new contract cycle.

Most of the faculty does not have Medicare taken from their paychecks, but for as long as they have offered it through Eastern there has never been an increase within it. There will be a request for this increase.

Over the years, the library has had very limited additional funds. The library has a great need for current publications and volumes; there will be a 15 percent projected increase within the library acquisition fee to help with these upgrades.

A 3 percent cost increase will be put towards general operation and a 15 percent utilities line.

In other business, Conference Room 2110 in the Doudna Fine Arts Center has been renamed the James K. Johnson Conference Room.

James Johnson, Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at Eastern, will be retiring on June 30 after years of dedication to the univeristy.

He has been here long enough to see and help make the Tarble Arts center, the Burl Ives Studio and the Doudna Fine Arts Center come to life. Johnson later gave a presentation of the first year of the Doudna Fine Arts Center Reopening. He said there were 260 performances within the first eight months of the center re-opening.

Other business included, money being approved to be put into a reserve account for student health insurance, approval of the restroom facilities for $298,000 for the design phase of project and a 5 percent increase for the loan bidder for the coal for the heating plant to be used for the current plant, which must be bought in Indiana.

Also, the university will be working with Kone Elevators & Escalators instead of Otis Elevators because they gave the lowest bid for maintenance and inspection.

Kayleigh Zyskowski can be reached 581-7943 or at kzyskowski@eiu.edu.

The design of the renewable energy center which will be located at on the corner of Edgar Avenue and Rt. 130. (File Photo)

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