With little more than two weeks remaining in the year, University of Toledo board members on Monday gave their stamp of approval for a final $722.1 million budget that will take them through the first six months of 2021.
But university administrators and staff won’t get much of a reprieve from crunching numbers with the expectation they’ll be back at it early next year — with the added challenge of trying to plan around a pandemic.
Normally UT officials approve their fiscal year budget in June, but this year they delayed the process by six months because of the coronavirus pandemic.
All told, the 2020-21 budget is roughly 6.3 percent less than the $770.4 million budget the board approved in June of 2019. In most years, the university also has money leftover once expenses are factored in, but not this time. Matt Schroeder, UT executive vice president for finance and administration, said during his presentation that the university will see declines in revenue for housing, dining, and parking. Fewer students are on campus because of the coronavirus, sporting and other events have been canceled, and overall enrollment is lower, he said.
Revenue from student tuition and aid is expected to be roughly $16.2 million less than what was anticipated during last year’s budget.
Between expenses and fund transfers, the university would be seeing spending exceeding revenue by more than $28.2 million if not for federal coronavirus relief funding that wiped the operating margin to zero.
Monday’s meeting marked the last for UT board members in 2020 and an end to a turbulent year. Besides this year’s pandemic, the board was also dealt a blow when then-UT president Sharon Gaber announced in April she was resigning to take a job as chancellor at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte — just when colleges and universities nationwide were first tackling budget and enrollment challenges because of the coronavirus.
Dr. Gregory Postel — the former interim president at the University of Louisville and the school’s former executive vice president for health affairs — took over as interim UT president July 6. The board in September then voted to suspend the presidential search that was supposed to begin this fall and instead opted to keep Dr. Postel on until the end of 2022.
The leadership change also came about while UT officials and members of the South Toledo community were at odds over the future of the University of Toledo Medical Center, the former Medical College of Ohio Hospital. UT officials have argued the hospital was reporting steep financial losses and has become unsustainable. In mid-April, the university announced it was exploring options to sell or lease the medical college — a move that has angered state lawmakers and UTMC supporters from the South Toledo community. UT officials would announce months later they were tabling those plans indefinitely, but financial worries continued.
During budget presentations Monday, UT officials said UTMC surpassed surpassed financial experts’ revenue expectations for the last half of 2020.
Officials predicted the former Medical College of Ohio Hospital would see reduced patient volumes, lost pharmacy retail, and more UTMC physicians and residents transferred to ProMedica hospitals as part of an affiliation agreement between the university and the nonprofit, private health-care system. Instead, patient volumes in recent months have been consistent or surpassed 2019’s numbers, pharmacy retail has increased, and transfers from UTMC have been put on hold — to the benefit of UTMC’s patient volumes and bottom line.
But perhaps most unforeseen was UTMC’s recent partnership with the Toledo Clinic, which is expected to help bring in much needed income in the coming years.
But staffing shortages and fluctuating reimbursements for medical procedures continue to be a concern, UT officials said.
In other business, board members on Monday agreed to rename UT’s College of Business and Innovation after an alumnus who donated more than $18.7 million to the university.
The college will be named the John B. and Lillian E. Neff College of Business and Innovation to honor John Neff, who died June 4, 2019, at the age of 87. He had received his bachelor’s degree in industrial marketing in 1955 from UT, where he also met his wife, Lillian.
For years, Mr. Neff donated to the College of Business and Innovation, establishing the Neff Trading Room, equipped with high-tech Bloomberg terminals, which students use to access real-time information from the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ and Chicago Board of Trade. The Neff family also established an endowed chair in the college and they have funded student scholarships and faculty teaching and research awards. The Department of Finance had already been named in Neffs’ honor.
“The generosity of Mr. Neff and his family has made a tremendous impact on our College of Business and Innovation by supporting some of our most promising students and attracting top faculty experts to our campus to train the investors of the future,” Dr. Postel said. “We are proud to name the college in his honor and look forward to the impact that connecting his legacy more closely to our business programs will have on generations to come.”
First Published December 15, 2020, 1:33 a.m.
