Manoa Faculty Senate Committee on
Administration and Budget Meeting Minutes
August 21, 2008, 12:30 p.m., Hawaii Hall 208

Present: Ross Christensen, Shirley Daniel, Bob McHenry, David Sanders, Judith Inazu, CN Lee, David Duffy, Matt McGranaghan, and Mary Tiles UHM Faculty Senate liaison

Invited attendees:  Vice Chancellor Kathy Cutshaw

Absent: David Chin, Tricia Wright

Mary Tiles welcomed the new committee members and all present introduced themselves. The committee unanimously elected Ross Christensen as chair.  Shirley Daniel agreed to serve as recorder. 

After a discussion of member schedules, the committee tentatively agreed to on Thursday Sept 4, October 2, November 6 and December 4 at 11 p.m.  Chair Christensen agreed to find an appropriate venue and inform the committee of the meeting place.

Mary Tiles brought up the issue of faculty housing and distributed a 2006 faculty senate resolution on the issue. The committee discussed the issues relating to faculty staying longer in the Manoa faculty housing than originally intended. The committee agreed to address the issue further when VC Cutshaw presented the administrations proposed options.

The committee discussed items that were remaining from earlier agendas that will need to be addressed by the committee. These include a possible joint resolution on research administration/ORS and the issue of tenure for administrators.

Ross Christensen introduced a request from the Library Faculty Senate for CAB to support their resolution submitted to the Chancellor requesting that the library be exempt from the 2% budget cuts and that the balance of the supplemental allocation for the library be released by the Chancellor.  The committee discussed the issue, recognizing that the library serves the whole campus. Members suggested that the Library provide more information about what the consequences of budget cuts would be on library services so that it would be easier to assess the impact on other campus units. No final decision was reached.

VC Cutshaw entered the room. She led a discussion of the following items:

• Improvements in the facilities staffing and an online work order management system are evidence of progress in this area. There will also soon be an online module tracking space utilization on campus that should be helpful.
• Her goals for facilities management this year are to institute a planning office to coordinate and plan long-term campus improvements, R&M and improve sustainability on campus.
• She also wants to establish a campus planning committee to help set priorities and advise the administration. For example, the committee might help choose between a new classroom building and a new lab building. The committee would consists of the 4 Vice Chancellors, 2 faculty designated by the faculty senate, the Asst. VC for facilities, the Asst. VC for planning, a student and a staff. The committee is modeled after those on other mainland campuses.
• VC Cutshaw discussed various issues involving faculty housing. She has solicited information related to 2 new facilities, the most promising of which would be adjacent to the current Waihila Ridge facility. The administration is also exploring the possible purchase of existing apartment buildings. The discussions are very preliminary at this point.
• She expects that the President will soon announce a new housing assistance program that would help guarantee 100% financing for faculty homes.
• She discussed the problems caused by the limited turnover in the Manoa faculty housing units. While the existing policy requires rental terms to be limited to 3 years, this restriction was put in abeyance by Chancellor Englert to support faculty retention in 2005 or so. The committee discussed various potential changes to the policy, or the impact of reverting to and enforcing the original rental term limits.  VC Cutshaw agreed to gather more data about faculty needs, salary levels, etc and come back to the committee for further discussion.
• VC Cutshaw passed out a presentation that is to be presented by VP To do tomorrow to the Board of Regents regarding the UH biennium budget.  UHM’s CIP priority is a new classroom building.  When built, the classroom building would not only provide state of the art learning facilities, but also free up some other classroom space in mixed use buildings, which would allow some of those classrooms to be converted to much needed office space. The operating budget request also includes significant R&M, as well as $2.5 million for student success, $5 million for the JABSOM rural health initiative, and $2.4 million for increased electricity service costs. It is imperative that the campus continue to conserve to mitigate this increase.

The meeting adjourned at 2:30 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Shirley J. Daniel

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