Cooling off period

The Florida house and senate have agreed to the major budgetary issues and are nearly ready to begin the mandated 72 hours of cooling off before voting on the final budget. Note that during this 72 hours, we still pay $40000 a day. The University is taking a look at the figures and will begin to make their decisions on how to handle the revenue reductions. Stay tuned....

Our "Dear Colleague" letter from the Dean confirms the ~45 million in cuts or ~6% to the University. Of course, how that 6% is distributed across the university is the critical part:

Dear Colleagues,


I’d like to update you on the budget situation and to share a few thoughts at the end of the academic year.

As you probably know, the leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate announced a budget agreement last week, and details are currently being worked out in budget committees. It looks like UF’s net cut (after tuition increases are figured in) will be about $45 million. That’s roughly equivalent to the six percent cut we faced last year. It will be some time before the UF senior administration and Trustees announce how UF’s cut will be allocated, but I continue to be hopeful that this College will avoid the most draconian parts of the ten percent plan we submitted in early April.

In the College plan, this puts Geology in the gray area regarding substantial cuts to our program. No details of course, but scary to think about. I'm sure other departments and employees are checking their place on the list.