Chancellor Woodson’s memo:

Now that the State has adopted its FY2018 – FY2019 biennial budget we can look to the year ahead with greater certainty. The following is a high level summary of the major components of the adopted budget which impact our employees and our College.

Employee Salary and Benefits
– $1,000 across-the-board salary increase for full-time, SHRA university employees. We have not heard official word from the University regarding when the salary increase will be implemented, but there is a possibility it will be reflected as early as the July payroll. If not, we can expect to see it in the August payroll, retroactive to July 1.

– Funding pool equivalent to $1,000 for each State-funded EHRA FTE. We are waiting on specific guidance from UNC General Administration on how this funding will be administered–there is a possibility the allocation may be merit based.

– Three (3) Special Bonus Annual Leave days (24 hours) for all full-time employees. These days may carry over to future years, but have no “cash out” value. The University is still working through how these leave days will be tracked–given this is a new category of leave.

– Board of Governors will monitor creation of new positions over $70,000 and salary increases of more than 5% that would result in an annual salary of $100,000 or greater.

CALS Budget Enhancements
– $5.1 million for the Food Processing Innovation Center, to be housed at the NC Research Campus in partnership with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, $700,000 continuing to support operations.

– Funding for NC State Extension, to include $700,000 continuing in FY 2017-18 and an additional $100,000 continuing in FY 2018-19

University-wide Budget Impacts
– Full funding for enrollment growth–but enrollment funding to be based on verification of actual enrollment. If the College does not meet its Graduate and PhD enrollment targets for academic year 2017-2018, the Provost may seek additional budget reductions from our College beyond the $200,000 reduction he communicated this past spring.

– At this time we do not anticipate an additional budget reduction from UNC-GA, but we will not know for certain until the Board of Governors has had the opportunity to thoroughly review the budget and understand its impacts on the UNC system. We remain cautiously optimistic.