Eastern administrators Friday unveiled a budget-cutting plan that relies heavily on cuts to equipment expenditures and callbacks from each of the vice presidential areas.

The plan to distribute approximately $2.3 million in cuts mandated by Gov. George Ryan’s budget cuts was presented at Friday’s meeting of the Council on University Planning and Budget. Interim President Lou Hencken; Jeff Cooley, vice president for business affairs, and Blair Lord, vice president for academic affairs, unveiled their strategies to get through this year’s financial worries.

The governor has asked all state universities to give back portions of their budgets because the sagging economy has burdened the state with a revenue shortfall.

Eastern’s plan to cover the $2.3 million sliced from its current budget will drain $750,000 from an $800,000 equipment replacement reserve fund. In addition, more than $400,000 of the cut comes from Hencken and all four vice presidents making proportional cuts to their areas of the budget.

The $50,000 left in the equipment fund may need to be used as backup for the $50,000 in micro-computer funds also wiped out by the cuts, Cooley said.

Each vice president cut a percentage of their budget roughly equal to the percent of the total budget in their control. For example, academic affairs has about 75 percent of the budget, so Lord’s $302,300 cut amounted to approximately 75 percent of the cuts to the vice presidential areas.

The university’s decision earlier this year to lower heating in campus buildings by two degrees and other utility savings will allow Eastern to return $260,000 to the state. In addition, because fewer employees are retiring this fiscal year it will save Eastern approximately $345,000 in personal services.

Cooley also told the CUPB that an accounting change will allow Eastern to count some of its summer school income toward this fiscal year, which will help the university return $100,000 to the state.

Hencken said he is still unsure whether these cuts will only be made this year, or if Eastern will suffer a base budget cut, which would reduce the university’s initial funding next year as well.

“That would seriously affect the academic quality of this institution,” Hencken said. “It would cause us to make decisions we don’t want to make.”

If this year’s $2.3 million callback becomes a base cut, raising tuition again may be a possibility, Kim Furumo, Budget Office director, said Friday.

In October, Eastern’s Board of Trustees approved the Student Senate Tuition and Fee Review Committee’s recommendation to raise tuition by 5 percent next year. However, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign decided earlier this month to raise their tuition 10 percent next year.

When asked if tuition could again be raised at Eastern, Furumo said “I’m not aware of plans to do that, but that would be a possibility.”

Furumo, did not give an overly positive revue of next year’s budget at Friday’s CUPB meeting. Furumo called the budget recommendation from the Illinois Board of Higher Education “a very optimistic look at what we’ll end up with next year.”

The IBHE recommended Eastern for a 5.4 percent increase or $4.4 million, $3 million of which is an expected increase in university income.

However, Furumo said Eastern’s main renovation project remains a high priority on the IBHE’s capitol projects list.

The Doudna Fine Arts Center renovation and expansion is the state’s No. 5 priority in capital projects next year and the IBHE recommended $7.5 million for movable equipment for next fiscal year. Furumo said the project has a “high likelihood of being funded.”

But Furumo conceded the status of all improvement projects remains uncertain.

“I don’t even know if there will be capital projects next year.”

A chilled water loop and electrical distribution upgrade, for which the IBHE recommended $5.6 million in state funds ranks a much lower 29 on the state priority list.

“Don’t plan on getting those funds,” Furumo said.

Hencken maintained that it is possible that this year’s $2.3 million cut won’t be as severe as it now looks, but “realistically, as every day goes by I have less hope that that will occur.”

Jill Nilsen, vice president for external affairs, said that she and Hencken are in touch with state and federal legislators, trying to find ways to lessen the cuts or sources of new funding.

Later this month they plan to take six “key representatives” to dinner in an effort to explain the seriousness of Eastern’s situation.

“Whereas the U of I will take them out for steak, we’ll take them out for cheese sandwiches,” Hencken joked.

Hencken and Nilsen will also travel to Washington, D.C. to look into the possibility of acquiring federal funding.