The Council on University Planning and Budget received a fiscal year 2019 budget update during its Friday meeting.

Paul McCann, the interim vice president for business affairs, said for disclosure purposes, the university is still in the process of an audit for FY19.

He said things are not finalized yet, so everything he talked about is still subject to the audit.

McCann said there are a couple of things so far that could be subject to review. First, there is a new Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) standard this year that requires the university to disclose in the financial statement all the potentially hazardous waste the university must get rid of.

Tim Zimmer, the director of facilities planning and management, said hazardous waste includes radioactive material or chemicals used in different departments like health services.

Zimmer said facilities, with the help of the physics department, was able to get rid of radioactive material on Thursday, for example. It was sent to Oak Ridge Nuclear Facility in Tennessee.

McCann said the university must also disclose the dollars put toward getting rid of the hazardous waste.

“We have reviewed that information and we don’t believe there’s anything significant from the standpoint of financial statements, but we’re waiting on auditors,” McCann said.

The other thing is there is a disclosure within the financial statements regarding health care costs that the state provides the university, McCann said.

McCann said for FY19 the university ended up with an unrestricted fund balance of about $7.2 million, but he said that number is up about $2.2, $2.3 million from 2018, which was about $5 million.

“The only caution that I place on that is that we are still digging ourselves out of the budget impasse. We still have a deficit within the fund balance of the income,” McCann said. “So we still have to build out of that until we are back to ground zero where we were before the budget impasse.”

Peggy Brown, an administrative assistant in the School of Extended Learning and CUPB chair, asked whether any of the $7.2 million in unrestricted funds would go in the university’s general reserves.

McCann said most of that $7.2 million is in local funds and those local funds are subject to review for excess funds.

“There will be some excess funds taken from there, otherwise we will leave that money within the local funds,” McCann said.

Also, McCann said another factor in the budget that is being looked at is the revenue bond. The revenue bond encompasses identities like Housing and Dining, the Student Recreation Center, Textbook Rental and the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

McCann said the revenue bond had a loss of about $3.2 million but he said that loss was within the budget estimate that was done at the beginning of the year and it was paid for through the fund balance that those identities have been able to accumulate.

“So it is roughly where we thought it would be. Are we doing things to try to correct that? The answer is yes. Will enrollment help? Yes. So all of those things are going to help take care of this,” McCann said.

Analicia Haynes can be reached at 581-2812 or achaynes@eiu.edu.