Budget Meeting
I spent all day long today in budget proposal meetings at my school; from 8:30 in the morning to late afternoon, representatives of various departments came before the committee I’m on, hats in hand, to request funding for projects to be paid for by Cascadia’s 2007-2008 year budget.
And I thought being on a hiring committee was hard.
What’s crazy-making about this is that all the proposals have merit; everyone is requesting funding for something that would make our jobs and our ability to serve the needs of students more efficient, safer, and/or easier. And while some of the requests seem scarily urgent, like purchasing a back-up power supply should the inevitable power outage threaten to bring down our computer network, and others—better counseling support for students “merely” basic to our institutional mission—not a single one I’ve heard so far doesn’t deserve to be have money put behind it.
The problem, of course, is that there is probably at least three times as much money requested as there will be funds allocated by the state for our school.
What is one to do, therefore?
This is why I’m loathe to keep a budget in my own personal life. Our little family’s strategy has typically been to just buy stuff until we’re broke. No sense in making plans that can’t be realized; we temper our desires in the crucible of reality.
I realize, of course, that an organization can’t behave this way: goals must be set and procedures must be followed to reach them. It might be interesting, though, to just give everyone on campus check-writing authority and let us all draw upon the available funds until they’re all used up. We’d probably all have much nice computers and office chairs than we currently do, but I wonder if there would be any paper towels in the bathrooms.
And I’d probably use my money on hiring someone to sit in this very meeting for me.
And I thought being on a hiring committee was hard.
What’s crazy-making about this is that all the proposals have merit; everyone is requesting funding for something that would make our jobs and our ability to serve the needs of students more efficient, safer, and/or easier. And while some of the requests seem scarily urgent, like purchasing a back-up power supply should the inevitable power outage threaten to bring down our computer network, and others—better counseling support for students “merely” basic to our institutional mission—not a single one I’ve heard so far doesn’t deserve to be have money put behind it.
The problem, of course, is that there is probably at least three times as much money requested as there will be funds allocated by the state for our school.
What is one to do, therefore?
This is why I’m loathe to keep a budget in my own personal life. Our little family’s strategy has typically been to just buy stuff until we’re broke. No sense in making plans that can’t be realized; we temper our desires in the crucible of reality.
I realize, of course, that an organization can’t behave this way: goals must be set and procedures must be followed to reach them. It might be interesting, though, to just give everyone on campus check-writing authority and let us all draw upon the available funds until they’re all used up. We’d probably all have much nice computers and office chairs than we currently do, but I wonder if there would be any paper towels in the bathrooms.
And I’d probably use my money on hiring someone to sit in this very meeting for me.
posted by Professor Dave at 3:13 PM
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