By SUSAN JONES
The Senate Budget Policies committee recently received the results of a survey of unit-level planning and budgeting committee members from throughout the University.
Of the 285 people who received the survey, 130 or 45.6 percent responded. Steve Wisniewski, vice provost for budget and analytics, said he would like to see better response rates on these surveys, “because I worry about who are we not hearing from.”
Thurman Wingrove, interim chief financial officer, said this is the sixth or seventh year of the survey and he doesn’t think they’ve ever gotten as much as 50 percent to respond. A few new questions were added this year.
Juan Taboas, chair of the Senate Budget committee, said he was encouraged by some of the responses. He said responses to questions about how well participants were informed on issues and how much they felt they contributed were fairly positive. “The only schools that stood out in the negative didn’t have enough respondents to really make an informed summary of that particular RC.”
Those questions included:
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To what extent are you as a committee member satisfied that you have adequate data/information to make informed recommendations? 44 percent said considerably satisfied and 37 percent said moderately.
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To what extent are you as a committee member comfortable fully participating in your PBC and satisfied that you have the opportunity to ask questions necessary to make informed recommendations in meetings? 58 percent considerably and 26 percent moderately
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How would you rate the impact of your PBC in the planning and budgeting process of your unit, i.e., to what extent did the PBC contribute to the process? 28 percent high, 45 percent moderate, 19 percent low
Committee member Max Schuster raised concerns about responses to one of the new questions: How often is your PBC using the budget ReSTART model for management, budget planning, program development and strategic planning? The responses skewed negative, with 35 percent saying sometimes and 29 percent saying never.
“Without having a few years of history behind this, it’s hard to tell,” Wingrove said. “But it certainly tells me that the PBCs were not using the ReSTART model results as part of their deliberations maybe as much as they could have or should have.”
The new budget model, which is more centered on responsibility centers, was fully implemented for the 2023-24 fiscal year, Wingrove said, after it ran as a test parallel to the old budget model in the previous year.
“I think with any major change like this, there’s a period of time period of adjustment that folks are going through to really fully understand how it works,” he said. “The answer to this question may just reflect that. There’s still a gap yet in understanding how the model works would be my impression.”
Another new question asked: Does your committee have bylaws to guide operations and define roles? 44 percent said yes, 20 percent no and 36 percent weren’t sure.
Senate President Robin Kear noted that a memo to deans in 2022 from then-Provost Ann Cudd said that, “Each RC should post the bylaws or guidelines for their PBC on their website, along with the list of members. PBCs should meet regularly during the budget cycle, beginning in the early fall. PBCs should establish meeting dates that complement the University’s budget cycle and communicate the schedule of meetings with RC members. If the PBC does not have bylaws, they should be created and posted by the end of the 2022 fall semester.”
She suggested that the Senate Budget committee should be checking on if those rules have been implemented two years after that memo was sent. The committee held a retreat with planning and budgeting committee members where they were to remind people about those suggestions.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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