Ohio University’s Board of Trustees will discuss increasing faculty raises and taking out more debt to pay for its backlog of construction projects.
The trustees’ first meeting of Fall Semester will be at Columbus State Community College on Aug. 29 and 30. Among other discussions, OU President Roderick McDavis and other university administrators will ask for an additional one percent salary pool increase for faculty and staff.
“Given where we are today, we can provide an additional one percent salary increase for both faculty and for staff,” McDavis said at OU’s Faculty and Staff Convocation on Wednesday.
If approved by the board, Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit and Vice President For Finance and Administration Stephen Golding will decide how to allocate the increase.
The potential increase in the salary pool was only confirmed Wednesday afternoon to trustees and it was unclear whether the board needed a formal resolution to approve it, said Board Secretary Peter Mather.
Along with salary raises, the board will discuss taking out another $100 million in debt to renovate buildings and allocate more money to deferred maintenance projects — raising OU’s total debt to $585 million.
“We need to spread the incremental projects out over the next five years,” Golding wrote in the board agenda. “We should not issue $100 million of taxable debt today, but rather issue additional tax-exempt debt over the next five years.”
The board is not expected to vote on Golding’s recommendation.
The board will also vote to name buildings, establish new funding sources for scholarships and decide to develop improvements to Alden’s HVAC system — a $1.75 million cost — and a new $575,000 elevator for Haning Hall to be purchased with state appropriations.
Name changes for OU’s athletic facility, Schoonover Center, OU’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine campus in Dublin and the School of Art are all on the board’s consent agenda.
Golding also outlined the creation of “quasi-endowments” that will provide matching funds to eligible scholarship endowments.
“Quasi-endowments are financial instruments established by a governing board using unrestricted operating reserves that are intended to function like an endowment,” Golding wrote.
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