NMSU announces financial reductions

New Mexico State University president Valerio Ferme sent a letter to NMSU staff members clarifying a memo in June that announced reductions across school.

In the August letter, Ferme wrote that NMSU had a $2.5 million structural budget deficit, and the university is taking action to account for this and less funding from the federal government.

A structural debt is an ongoing shortfall in estimated permanent revenue when compared to estimates for expenses. NMSU said to the Bulletin that this is “fairly common for university budgets” and that the school ended the fiscal year with a modest surplus.

One part of the solution includes a 1% one-time reduction across all departments in the entire NMSU system.

In the letter, Ferme said that the “president’s office is holding two positions vacant, with the intent of eliminating them; and it has significantly reduced spending on several presidential projects and travel initiatives

“From my perspective, we are in this together, and I want to exemplify it through my actions,” he said.

The school said that one of the goals with these reductions will be to not remove any existing filled positions but rather find “savings opportunities.”

These reductions are not cuts to the NMSU budget, however. According to a statement from NMSU made to the Bulletin, the school “will have the same overall budget” and the funds from the reductions will be reallocated.

Ferme continued by saying that NMSU has lost $29 million in research funding due to federal cuts and while these cuts were not the sole reason for this change, NMSU said that the school is “very cognizant of the current federal cuts to grants and research, so our current reallocation can help NMSU be more prepared moving forward.”

The letter sent to the school staff also said that the school is not in crisis yet but ‘the best time to look at one’s overall operations for restructuring and fiscal repositioning is in times of relative calm.”