Budget will run deficit

DANIEL McCABE | We're back to budgets with deficits -- if only for a single year. After balancing our books for three years running, Vice-Principal (Administration and Finance) Phyllis Heaphy announced at Senate last week that the University's budget for 1998-99 will probably result in an operating deficit of $5 million. Most of the blame goes to the Quebec government, which continues to hack away at university budgets as part of its plan to balance its own books. The University expects to be hit with an $11.4 million cut to its operating grant. As a result of a 3.4% decrease in McGill's full-time student enrolment during the current academic year, the government will trim an additional $2 million from McGill's operating grant (the size of the grants given to universities by Quebec City is dictated in part by the number of full-time students each university educates). Principal Bernard Shapiro stated that the 98/99 deficit will be a one-time-only aberration -- McGill is committing itself to balanced budgets in future years. The University's board of governors is unlikely to support another deficit budget any time soon, he warned. With that in mind, Heaphy announced some of the measures McGill will be introducing to cope with dwindling support from the Quebec government. When McGill's current contract with the Faculty Club expires in September 1999, the University will cut its funding to the club by $200,000 each year. McGill's parking services, which currently produce deficits, could be outsourced to an outside firm. About $7 million worth of McGill-owned real estate might be sold. Corporations and individuals will be approached for donations -- in return, classrooms will be named in their honour (Heaphy pointed to the new Hautes Études Commerciales building as an example of how such a scheme can be successful). McGill's student associations will have to take on the energy costs of their buildings -- a prospect that doesn't sit well with student leaders. Students' Society president-elect Duncan Reid believes that this measure -- which is likely to cost his organization hundreds of thousands of dollars -- will hamper the Students' Society in the services it will be able to provide to its members. "It is a clear abandonment on the part of the University" towards maintaining the current quality of student life, he told The McGill Tribune. Campus-wide energy conservation measures are expected to produce another $500,000 in yearly savings. The University will also take back $1 million from a special $3 million student aid fund it created to assist out-of-province students as they came to terms with higher tuition rates recently imposed on them by the Quebec government. "As one year has now elapsed, and a number of the students in question will be graduating, amounts available will be reduced," Heaphy wrote in a memo that accompanied her budget presentation. For more information, please see Senate.