The University of Central Florida is looking at potentially having to cut $22 million to $57 million off its budget, and like UF President Bernie Machen, UCF's president said stimulus money is not a long-term solution to cuts.
UCF President John Hitt announced in a message to faculty and staff Tuesday that UCF could be looking at "the elimination of hundreds of faculty and staff jobs and deny(ing) educational opportunities to thousands of students" in the worst-case scenario. More details of the budget proposal will be released soon, he wrote.
Hitt also wrote that UCF would receive $18 million in stimulus money in both the Florida House and Senate budget proposals.
"As helpful as the stimulus money is in the near-run, it is not a long-term answer," he wrote.
"The cuts to UCF's base budget are permanent," he wrote, "and stimulus money disappears after two years."
Machen announced last week that UF would not be using stimulus money to offset budget cuts, which affect recurring costs, costs that must be paid every year, like salaries.
UF is expecting to receive $41 million in stimulus money each year for the next two years, Machen said, but after that time is up, UF can't count on that money.
"We can't just assume that that $41 million is going to be filled up in two years, so we are going to make our cuts," he said last week.
Instead, the money will be used to pay for transitional measures, like paying salaries for laid-off employees during their notice period, which can be a year long in some cases.
