A committee of the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees that is monitoring the financial situation at UAMS is meeting this morning for a monthly review.
They’ll be looking at this statement of the financial picture for the first seven months of the year.
The report’s “good news”:
The campus believes that it can meet a target of reducing a projected $72 million deficit to $39 million for the year ending June 30, in part because massive layoffs are now hitting the books. Bad news includes the fact that expenses are increasing at a greater rate than revenue.
Leslie Peacock was to
Compensation and Benefits Expenses increased $43.4 million (9%) more in the first six months of FY 2018 than the first six months of FY 2018. This increase over the prior year appears primarily due to the combination of:
*pay increases per the implementation of the campus-wide compensation plan, and
* higher full time equivalent (FTE) employee count in the clinical areas, with 64% of this variance (over the comparable prior period) occurring in ICE, where FTEs increased by 304 (6%) over the past year.
It should be clear, of course, that a $39 million deficit with depleted reserves and suspension of $4 million in deferred maintenance is not what you’d call good news for the long term. At some