Staff members who work through the summer months had a chance to sit down informally with Chief Administrator Sam Miller at each of the three sites for an update regarding budget and facilities. If you weren’t able to attend, here are the highlights:
- The Facility Study (see related story) is merely a guide for the board about how to best utilize facilities in the future. Decisions have not been made about any of the buildings although conversations are taking place about how to reduce our overhead to ensure that expenses are in line with available funds, which continue to diminish.
- Areas such as Media and Print & Production (now part of Creative Services) have been having conversations about the viability of maintaining multiple site for these programs (as we do currently) into the future. Current staffing levels when compared to other AEAs appear to be higher and the expenses of maintaining multiple sites may not be sustainable. Decisions have not been made but conversations are occurring.
- While the agency is currently on solid ground financially, we continue to dip into our reserves to meet our current staff and overhead expenses. We have to be careful that we are not dipping below suggested guidelines for reserves and thus must continue to find ways to reduce expenses.