Four months into fiscal year 2011, President Bill Perry and the business affairs administration for Eastern face the task of managing the university without the majority of the state appropriations until next year.

The university has received the last of the installments for Fiscal Year 2010 and $382,000 of Fiscal Year 2011 general revenue allocations.

Treasurer Paul McCann said initially the comptroller told the university that it would not receive any of the appropriations until next year.

“We were surprised that we even received $382,000 because not every university in the state had received money yet,” he said.

Furthermore, the university will receive $3 million less than the appropriations from last year – a 6 percent drop, according to an e-mail Perry sent to campus and staff Monday.

McCann said this is due to the legislature dropping the university’s general fund operation.

In both Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010 the university was appropriated $50.5 million.

However, that was only possible in Fiscal Year 2010 due to legislature using $3 million of stimulus funds to make up for “the holes in the state budget,” McCann said.

These stimulus funds are no longer available, hence the 6 percent drop.

In Fiscal Year 2010, the state allocated $50.5 million for the university.

However, this allocation has dropped down to $47.4 million for Fiscal Year 2011.

Despite budgetary constraints, President Perry said conservative budgeting may help Eastern continue without laying off employees or implement furloughs, as reported by the Times-Courier.

“That is absolutely the last resort,” he said. “We are not thinking or talking about those things.”

Although the budget will be tight, Perry said the university will be able to make the final crunch till the next appropriation installment.

“We expect next spring to be a rerun of spring 2010, in which we will be receiving appropriations in a ‘just in time’ fashion,” Perry said.

McCann agreed.

“Last year, we were able to carry forward into the spring semester,” McCann said. “We had saved enough money and used enough of over reserves to cover that period of time so we didn’t need emergency cash since then. It looks to me that we will be OK and make it through December.”

Eastern’s operational budgets for Fiscal Year 2011 now stand at 75 percent of the Fiscal Year 2010 allotment.

Because of this, the university will also continue budgetary actions announced in January of this year.

This 25 percent drop is inducing budgetary restrictions that include freezing hiring and cutbacks on reimbursement for travel expenses.

Additionally, non-safety related maintenance and operational spending is being reduced or postponed.

McCann said he recognizes that faculty and staff may run into some operational difficulties.

However business affairs hopes to minimize these effects on education as much as possible.

“I’m hopeful that most of those things aren’t going to have any direct affect on student,” McCann said. “One more student in a classroom won’t have too much of a detrimental effect on education. There are going to be some instances, but we’re trying very hard to keep our focus on the educational mission and make sure the students get what they’re paying for.”

Shelley Holmgren can be reached at 581-7942 or at meholmgren@eiu.edu